HSC, SSC students get fixed time to enter exam centres

PUNE: Students appearing for the secondary school certificate (SSC, Std X) and higher secondary certificate (HSC, Std XII) board exams this year will be allowed to enter the examination hall between 10.30am and 11am.
In the past, question papers went viral on WhatsApp, prompting the state board to have specific timings for students to enter the exam hall.




State board chairperson Shakuntala Kale said police investigation reports about the past cases revealed that late- comers would splash the question papers on social media.

Images of the mathematics and statistics, Marathi, secretarial practice and physics question papers for standard XII were circulated on WhatsApp about 17 to 40 minutes before students had to start writing, last year.

As many as 18 students were barred from five attempts at the HSC examination for forwarding the images of the question papers using WhatsApp during the board exams in March 2017. They now get a shot at the exam only in 2020.

Kale told TOI on Friday, "In all the cases of papers going viral last year, police investigations found that the Entry to students who entered the exam hall late were the most mischievous in sharing question papers on social media. Hence, we had to take this decision to have a fixed timing for entering the hall."

Kale said students cannot enter their classrooms before 10.30am or after 11am. "Once they settle inside the hall, they would be given the answersheets to fill up their details and also read the instructions. The practice of handing out the question paper 10 minutes before the schedule time would still continue."

The question paper would be distributed to the students in the classroom at 10.50am, so they will get a chance to go through the questions. They will be allowed to start writing at 11am.

"Genuine cases regarding latecomers who get stuck in traffic or face some other unavoidable issues need to be studied. Adecision has not been taken as yet," Kale said.

College principal Subhash Sevak, said, "A fixed timing is always easier to comply with for the supervisors. Earlier students would arrive and sit inside the hall one hour before the exam while some came 30 minutes after the start of the exam. The 30 minutes grace period was previously permitted but this added to the reporting time for the college staff. This rule of fixed half hour entry period will be extremely easy to abide by."