West Bengal: Can’t take higher secondary question paper home

KOLKATA: The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education is likely to combine the question paper and the answer-script from 2020. This means examinees will no longer be leaving the hall with the question paper.
The council has decided to combine Part A (question papers and answer scripts) with Part B (question-cum-answer booklet) which will prohibit students from taking back the question papers home from 2020 examinations.
At present, the exam questions are split into Part A, which consists of a printed question paper that has to be answered in separate scripts, and Part B, which comprises multiple-choice-questions and very-short-answer-type-questions that have to be answered in the question paper, tied with the answer scripts of Part A and submitted at the examination hall.
Part A comprises short questions and long-answer-type-questions.
So far, candidates were allowed to take back Part A question papers. From the next academic year, HS Council plans to distribute booklets during the board examination so that nothing can be taken outside the examination hall.
“Like the national-level tests, the booklet will have space for answer below each question. There will be no scope to write long answers,” said Saugata Basu, general secretary of West Bengal Government Teachers Association. He added, “Rather, students will be now forced to restrict their answers to the specified word count. If HS follows a similar pattern like the national entrance exams, then students will have to learn to answer questions within limited space. They will have to improve their space-management ability.”
Teachers pointed out that HS candidates have the tendency to attempt more questions than what has been asked for. “Examiners often find it puzzling to relate the questions to the answers attempted by the students. Now, if Part A and Part B are combined then students can’t take the liberty of answering additional questions,” pointed out Basu.
Basu also explained that the question-cum-answer booklet, which is in Part B has several sets so that two candidates sitting adjacently do not get the same set to answer. Once the two parts are combined there will be even reduced possibility of cheating.
President of West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, Mahua Das said, “The students had to weave the two parts – answer scripts as well as the question cum booklet together with a string distributed by invigilators. It had the risk of pages getting lost. Such possibilities will be considerably reduced.”