Bhubaneswar, Dec. 24: The matric examination will be held from February 25 to March 8, said school and mass education minister Rabi Narayan Nanda here today. The schedule for the eight papers will be announced in a couple of days.
“The form fill-up for correspondence courses will continue till December 31. Only after that, we will be able to figure out the exact number of regular and ex-regular candidates taking the high school certificate exam,” said Dakhya Prasad Nanda, president of Board of Secondary Education, which conducts the annual exams in the state.
All exams will start at 9am. Students of most high schools will be allowed to appear for the papers in their own campuses. However, for schools lacking basic infrastructure, the students will have to go to a high schools situated not more than 5km from theirs.
The state government has asked the district administration concerned to identify the exam and nodal centres for security of question papers. It will form a committee comprising the district collector, superintendent of police and the district education officer in each district to decide on the criteria for selection of the centres. Closed-circuit television cameras will be installed in sensitive exam centres.
This time, the question paper will have an equal number of multiple-choice objective and subjective questions. A student will be required to attempt 50 objective questions on an optical mark recognition sheet within an hour.
The time allowed for writing the 50 marks of subjective questions is 90 minutes. Students will get a small break in between the two segments.
The state government has also decided to replace marks with grades from the 2014 matric exam to reduce stress levels and unhealthy competition among students.
They would be evaluated on a nine-point grade system — A1 (91-100), A2 (81-90), B1 (71-80), B2 (61-70), C1 (51-60), C2 (41-50), D (33-44), E (21-32) and F (below 20).
Those securing grades between A1 and D will be treated as qualified. Grades E and F will stand for unsatisfactory.
