It's that time of the year when sleepless nights and fretful days define the lives of most students and parents as well.
Board exams are knocking on the door with Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), and the state's Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) starting their tests this month or the next.
While JAC will be the first to hold its exams for matriculate (Class X) and intermediate (Class XII) candidates on February 16, ISC practicals have started from Monday. Theory papers, however, will begin from February 23.
For Class X (ICSE), the first paper (Hindi) starts from February 26.
The CBSE has scheduled its exams next month with the Class XII students appearing for the papers from March 2 and Class X candidates from March 3.
Though rules and exam formats for all boards remain the same more or less, the CISCE has brought in a few changes that are sure to make the students happy.
For example, ICSE and ISC examinees will be relieved to know that the council has done away with OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets for writing personal details like names, subject, subject code, date and roll number.
Similarly, examiners supervising the test will not have to use OMR sheets for records and verification. Ditto for evaluators.
This rule was introduced last year, but was scrapped in the wake of complaints from across the country. Although an extra 15 minutes were given to students for filling up the OMR sheets, students found marking their details on the OMR sheets particularly tedious and confusing.
"Students remain very tensed at the time of examinations. On top of that, OMR sheets require extra attention. Hence, chances of committing errors automatically increase. Many schools had complained to the council about the problems faced by the examinees, which could have prompted it to abolish the system," said Indrani Singh, principal of ADLS Sunshine School affiliated to the CISCE.
However, the seven-digit UID (unique identification number) introduced last year to ensure confidentiality and easily identification of a student will remain.
But the council has brought back the old index number, which has the year, centre code, school code and the roll number of an examinee, after a year's gap.
"The UID is here to stay while re-introduction of index numbers will help in seating arrangements," Singh added.
While 4,212 students from across 43 schools of Jamshedpur are appearing for ICSE, 2,884 will be writing their ISC papers.
The number of examinees in CBSE has increased as more students have opted for the boards instead of the school-conducted exams.
The total number of examinees for CBSE Class X in Jamshedpur is 4,500 and for Class XII is 3,500. There are about 31 CBSE schools in the steel city, out of which 18 have class XII.
"We are all geared up for the examinations. The CBSE rules have not changed and we will follow the guidelines of the past years," said Vipin Sharma, principal of Vidya Bharati Chinmaya Vidyalaya.
As for JAC, 24,477 students are set to appear for matriculation exam from Jamshedpur and 20,935 for intermediate.
