Other States - Orissa

HSC examinations likely from March 26

CUTTACK: This year’s matriculation examinations in the State are likely to begin from March 26. The State Board of Secondary Education (BSE) officials are going to finalize the programme of the examinations at crucial meeting here on Monday.

According to sources, the BSE, hit by the marks scandal issue last year is planning to regroup itself quickly to regain its lost ground and conduct the annual school leaving examination in time. The BSE officials are hopeful that they would complete the examination without any further hiccup and publish the results in the month of May so as to facilitate the students to take admissions in Plus II stream of other boards.

This year around 4.06 lakh students of some 7,000 schools would sit for the ten-day long annual high school certificate examinations, a slight more than last year’s total, sources informed.

It was learnt that at least 3.34 lakh regular students, 56,000 ex-regular students and about 15,000 correspondence course students have filled up the application forms, which ended on January 28 last.

Besides finalizing the dates of the examinations, the BSE officials would also fix the number of examination centers at the Monday’s meeting. It is expected that the examinations would be held in about 1,800 centers spread across the state.

The BSE is planning to have at least one examination center in every ten km radius so as to see that the examinees need not cover long distance to sit for the examination.

Since the examinations this year are being conducted in new set ups, the BSE is obviously finding it difficult to conduct the same smoothly. Instead of usual 750 marks, the examination this time would be held for 800 marks for the first time under a new syllabus. Optional papers, which were stopped for over a decade now, have been reintroduced again this year. Besides, at least four of the optional papers have practical examinations.

More importantly, with a view to weed out the bogus candidates from the examinations, the BSE for the first time this year is introducing ‘enrolment cards’ for the class X students.

The enrolment cards that would have photographs of the students pasted on it along with the name and address of their parents would help to identify the bonafide students during the time of examination.

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