Stage set for annual HSC exams in Odisha

Cuttack: With a few hours left for the annual High School Certificate (HSC) examinations to begin, the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) has completed all preparations.

The examination would begin at 9 AM tomorrow, BSE president Prof Dakshya Prasad Nanda informed here today.

“The students will appear in the First Language subject. Through the media, I want to inform all centre superintendents that the examination would begin at 9 AM and end at 11.40 AM. During the examination, the concerned superintendents will allow a 10-minute break to the students to collect the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets. Barring the Mathematics subject which will have 15 minutes of extra time and end at 11.55 AM, examination of the remaining subjects will end at 11.40 AM. All centre superintendents have been instructed to stick to the aforesaid timing,” Nanda said.

Talking about OMR sheets, he said the Board had sent the OMR sheet packets to all examination centres much earlier.

“We have told the centre superintendents to open the OMR sheet packets much earlier and check whether the number of OMR sheets sent by the Board is equal to the number of students or less. This year, we have sent 25 additional OMR sheets to each centre. Apart from this, we have kept 300 additional sheets in each nodal centres. Despite this, if there is a shortage of OMR sheets, the concerned superintendents have been asked to immediately contact either the District Education Officer (DEO) or the Board headquarters,” he informed.

On the possibility of shortage of question papers, the BSE president said the Board has instructed the centre superintendents to immediately check the label on the question paper packets mentioning the total number of question papers allotted to the centre. If they feel that there is shortage of question papers, they should immediate inform the DEO, the nodal officer or the Board headquarters.

“I hope there would be no shortage of question papers as the Board has kept additional question papers in the district nodal centres,” Nanda said.

Stating that the question papers have reached all examination centres from the district nodal centres this evening, he said DEOs have informed that the district administrations are in a state of readiness for the examinations.

“We hope that the examinations would begin smoothly in the state tomorrow,” Nanda said.

A total of 6,01,348 Regular and Ex-Regular students will appear in the examinations in 2882 centres.

The examination will end on March 4.