Students of South Point congratulate each other after their Higher Secondary results were declared. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Moumita Adhilkary knew she would pass; she was more interested in knowing her aggregate, which neither the website she searched nor the telecom service provider she sent an SMS to would tell her.

The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education may have published the Higher Secondary results in a record 40 days, but it kept students in the majority of schools in Calcutta waiting for several hours on their big day to know exactly how they fared in the examination.

Although the council made the result sheets available on some websites by 10am, these only mentioned whether a student had passed or failed.

The scores had to be tabulated by the schools — the exercise took over three hours — before the examinees were handed their marksheets.

“We put up the abstract of the results sent by the council by 11.30am, but it listed just the candidates’ names, roll numbers and mentioned whether they had passed or failed in individual subjects. It took a lot of time for us to tabulate the marks scored by 478 candidates,” Joyoti Solomon, the principal of South Point High School, said.

The parent of a student said the wait was “nerve-wracking” for everyone in the family. “The school first asked us to call after noon. They then extended it to 2.30pm.”

Students of South Point High School got their full results only after 3pm.

Moumita’s institution, Alipore Multipurpose School, took almost the same time to tabulate the data provided by the council.

Sabyasachi Pramanik, in charge of Patha Bhavan High School, said the council should have uploaded the complete results. “It made little sense for students to search websites and know only whether they had passed or failed.”

Jammed networks and delayed responses from telecom operators that were providing pass-or-fail information through SMS added to the anxiety of students and their parents.

Indrani Banerjee, a resident of Behala, said she did not even know whether she had passed or failed for more than an hour-and-a-half after the results were declared.

“I could not access most of the websites. The traffic was too high. I sent an SMS to my cellphone service provider around 9.45am and the response came only at 11.20am, by which time the list of results had been released.”