The exam season in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry began on Thursday with nearly 8.66 lakh students taking the Plus-Two examinations.
Students attempted the Language 1 paper in Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, French, Arabic and other languages across 2,794 centres. Most students said that the papers were easy and had no surprises.
The exams began at 10 a.m., with 15 minutes set aside to read the question paper. In several schools students came in at 9 a.m. for a group prayer and a pep talk by teachers and heads of institutions.
Announcement of dates
In a first this year, the date of commencement of exams as well as the date of results were announced at the start of the academic year in 2017 to help students prepare well and remain stress-free. The Plus-Two exams are scheduled to end on April 6 and the results will be announced on May 16.
V. Manisha, a student of Rex Matriculation School who took the Tamil exam, said that the paper was simple. “We anticipated a simple paper and there were no unexpected questions,” she said.
A few students, however, said they had found the Tamil paper time-consuming and they wrote till the last minute. “We were able to finish our paper though. We need to plan how to allot time better as many of us spent a lot of time on the shorter answers today,” said S. Akhila, a student.
A majority of the students including, K. Sandhya, a student of Lady Willingdon School, said that the commerce stream students were expecting the Economics paper to be tough, while the Science students were focussing on Chemistry.
Heavy security
Heavy security arrangements were in place at exam centres and strong rooms. CCTV cameras have been fitted in the 296 strong rooms where the answer scripts will be kept before evaluation and special observers have been posted across all exam centres.
Inspecting the arrangements at the Lady Willingdon School in Triplicane, Minister for School Education K.A. Sengottaiyan said that strict action would be taken against students indulging in malpractice.
“We will also take action against school teachers or institutions which help students copy. Invigilators and supervisors have been asked not to take their cell phones into the exam halls and flying squads will be making surprise checks at the centres,” he said.
In Tiruvallur district, two private candidates and one school student were caught indulging in malpractice during the exam.
