2.5L students to write SSLC exams in Kittur K’taka

Dharwad: Stage is set for the smooth conduct of SSLC examination-1 which will be held from March 21 to April 4 in the state. Though the exams are spread over 14 days, students will have some relief as there will be a gap between papers.
Nine educational districts in Kittur Karnataka region — Dharwad, Belagavi, Chikkodi, Bagalkot, Vijayapura, Gadag, Haveri, Sirsi and Uttara Kannada — which come under the additional commissioner of school education and literacy, Dharwad, have made all arrangements for the hassle-free conduct of the examinations.
There are 3,817 high schools, including 1,449 govt schools, 1,217 aided private and 1,205 unaided schools in the region where 2,54,965 are studying in Class 10. Of them, 1,28,964 are boys and 1,26,001 are girls.
Dharwad district has 28,666 candidates while Belagavi has 33,072, Chikkodi 45,240, Bagalkot 33,209, Vijayapura 40,626, Gadag 16,458, Haveri 24,736, Sirsi 9,963 and Uttara Kannada 9,180.
Additional commissioner of school education and literacy Jayashree Shintri said the exams will be held at 773 centres spread across nine districts and 15,486 officials will be engaged in exam-related works. To ensure that the exams are held in a fair manner, 52 teams comprising 156 officers will keep vigil.
Chikkodi which has a maximum number of candidates has 130 examination centres while Uttara Kannada where only 9,180 candidates have registered will have 37 centres.
Teachers will not be deployed for examination duty at the same school they are employed. Instead, they will be sent as room invigilators to centres of another cluster. Similarly, the students of a school appearing for the exams will be distributed among other centres.
Webcasting to curb malpractices
The system of ranking the districts based on the pass percentage of each district has resulted in competition among the districts to move up the ladder in the list. The officials of the districts are pressurising the schools to take steps to increase the pass percentage and this has led to unfair practices. Now, while the pressure continues, the introduction of live streaming of the examination process and its monitoring through webcasting has come as a major hurdle for those who were resorting to unfair practices.
CCTVs have been installed in all the classrooms and corridors of the examination centres and webcast monitoring centres have been set up.
In Dharwad, webcasting centres have been set up at zilla panchayat and additional commissioner's offices.