HS examination: 'Affiliation may be cancelled for failure to curb cheating'

kolkata: The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) may cancel the affiliation of a particular school for its failure to curb cheating or prevent adopting similar unfair means by the students during the class 12 board examination beginning April 2.

The decision assumes significance as this will be the first time ever when students will appear for their higher secondary examinations from their respective home centres, considering the Covid situation deviating from the traditional practice of writing the examinations from other institutes and not in their respective schools.

An estimated 7.45 lakh candidates will appear for the class 12 examinations conducted by WBCHSE which will start from Saturday, April 2.

"Examinees will write the papers at home centres (own schools) as certain Covid protocols are to be followed in making seating arrangements for the candidates and for that, more school buildings are required compared to other years," WBCHSE President Chiranjib Bhattacharya said at a press conference on Thursday.

A teacher will not be allowed to invigilate on the day when the examination of the particular subject he/she teaches will be held. There will be special observers in charge of each venue and no examinees will be allowed inside examination halls with mobile phones.

The number of girls slated to appear in the HS examination is 71,000 more than boys this year. The total number of venues this year will be 6727 with the total centres being 998.

The higher secondary examination will be held from 10 am to 1.15 pm.A senior Council official said that there will be CCTV or videography facilities at the sensitive and highly sensitive centres that have been identified in Malda, Murshidabad, North 24-Parganas and a few other districts.

This year's offline exams were initially scheduled to be held from April 2 to April 20. However, as certain dates of JEE (Main) clashed with the schedule, some of them were changed and the examinations will now continue up to April 27. There will be no examinations from April 6 to 15 with bypolls in Asansol parliamentary constituency and Ballygunge Assembly constituency scheduled on April 12.