The ICSE council has announced the timetable for the ISC (Class XII) and ICSE (Class X) semester 1 exams for 2021 that will begin on November 15.
The ISC exam will end on December 16 and ICSE on December 6.
The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations published the timetable for the exams on its website on Wednesday evening.
The council had earlier announced that the semester 1 exam in November would follow the MCQ pattern and be conducted online.
The ISC exam will begin with English paper 2 (literature) and ICSE with English paper 1 (language).
The exam in each ISC paper will begin at 2pm and be of 90 minutes. The examinees will have an additional 15 minutes to read the questions.
The duration of most ICSE papers will be an hour. Maths and a few other papers will be of 90 minutes. Each exam will start at 11am and there will be no additional time to read the questions.
For some students, the exams will stretch for several weeks. Some teachers complained that this would further eat into the time available to complete the syllabus.
“During the exam, we cannot ask students to attend online classes. So, the time available with teachers will be reduced,” said John Stephen, acting principal, La Martiniere for Boys.
Many schools go into winter recess in December and the rehearsal exams are scheduled for December and January. Usually, several schools complete the syllabus by November or the first week of December. This year, teachers fear that might not be possible.
Schools have been conducting online exams on different platforms. The council has not announced its plan yet.
“There are questions like what platform will be used, when and how the link will be sent to students,” said a principal.
“Now that the timetable is out, we expect the council to let us know the modus operandi of the online exam,” said another principal.