Cuttack, Feb. 2: The Board of Secondary Education, Odisha, is taking a host of precautionary measures for the security of question paper-cum-answer sheets being introduced for this year’s matric exams starting February 25.
The board has made provisions to despatch the question paper-cum-answer sheets to the 301 nodal centres across Odisha from February 12. Then these will be sent to the 2,492 exam centres a day before each paper.
Official sources said the district education officers and those in charge of various nodal centres would be trained on the security aspects for smooth conduct of the annual high school certificate examination.
The precautions come in the wake of the theft of question papers in seven subjects from a high school in Puri last year. Minister of school and mass education Rabi Narayan Nanda will discuss the security issues with the superintendents of police and district collectors through video conferencing in Bhubaneswar next week, said board president Dakhya Prasad Nanda.
Nearly six lakh students, including 5.32 lakh regular candidates and 58,230 ex-regular ones, will take the matric test.
The students will be required to write answers in the ruling space provided on the question paper itself. This is expected to bring in uniformity in handwriting of students and at the same time, consume less space. An additional 20 per cent space will be provided for each individual question. Officials said two extra blank pages would be attached after the last page to ensure that students have scope to rewrite answers or for necessary corrections. The timing of the exam has also been revised from 7:30am to 9am because of the prevailing cold wave conditions.
On the first day, the students will appear for their first language paper, Odia, which will be followed by English (second language) on February 27.
The schedule for rest of the exams is — Sanskrit on March 1, mathematics on March 4, physical science on March 6, life science on March 7, geography and economics on March 8 and social science on March 9.
