ICSE and ISC schools have started drawing up plans as to how to conduct exams on campus a day after the ICSE council announced that the semester 1 examinations will be held offline and in the candidates’ respective schools.
Instead of one examination hall, city schools are planning to divide students in smaller rooms, draw circles or put up guards on the campus to maintain distance and also conduct an orientation for students to get them used to writing an exam in a school set up after a long gap.
The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) in the circular on Friday has said the “detailed guidelines for the conduct of the Semester 1 Examination will be shared” with the conveners and the heads of schools shortly.
Several schools will reopen next week and heads have already planned to conduct a meeting with teachers.
La Martiniere for Boys has planned to divide students in four halls instead of one. The school will have circles drawn out to discourage students from crowding and a group of teachers would be on duty to monitor students when they enter and leave.
The Heritage School is planning to put up posters on Covid safety norms on the campus and also set up guards to halt the movement of students and space them out. Students would be given slots to enter the campus. “The safety of students is primary,” said Seema Sapru, the principal of The Heritage School.
Calcutta Girls’ High School is planning to bring students at least for a day before the exam to get them habituated to the school set up. “They have not written an exam in school for months so we want them to come at least once before the semester 1 exam, see the seating arrangements. This would orient them to the school set up,” said principal Basanti Biswas.
There are days when schools would have both ICSE and ISC exams on the same day — in the morning and afternoon.
“We would have to sanitise the rooms or halls at least four times a day to maintain the safety measures,” said Terence Ireland, the principal of St James’ School.
Julien Day School Ganganagar is making arrangements to use other rooms and spaces on the campus to spread out the students.
“For more rooms, we would need more invigilators. This means that we would have to spare an equal number of teachers for invigilation duty in other schools,” said Bobby Baxter, the principal of the school.
School heads said more teachers would be required for the exams and they might have to ask teachers to cancel the travel plan.
The ICSE exam, which is scheduled to begin on November 29 will finish on December 16 and the ISC exam will begin on November 22 and end on December 20.
“We have our winter vacation that begins by the second week but we would have to ask teachers to cancel any travel plans before the exam ends,” said Biswas.
