Calcutta, Oct. 4: The HS council today abolished its age-old system of asking questions that require ?very long answers?.

The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education released a revised format with greater emphasis on objective-type questions.

Over 300,000 students of nearly 3,000 schools across the state will write their HS 2007 papers in the new format.

The Telegraph was first to report that its long, essay-type questions would be scrapped to enable students of humanities and commerce streams to score well like their science counterparts.

This is the first time since the HS course was introduced 28 years ago that such a major change is being made in the questioning pattern, council president Gopa Dutta said while releasing the revised question structure.

?With the changes in syllabus and examination system that have taken place in the past few years, there was an urgent need to change the old question pattern. We hope that our students will benefit in a big way with the revised question pattern,? she added.

Dutta said the revision was also essential in the wake of the decision to split the course and hold the HS exam only on the Class XII syllabus.

The traditional essay-type questions have been scrapped from all subjects, including the likes of history, political science and philosophy.

Even in a humanities subject like, say, history, students will not have to answer a single question carrying over 10 marks (see box).

In the old system, questions in many humanities subjects carried as much as 16 marks. In some subjects, students were asked to answer five questions carrying 16 marks each.

?Such a system was highly unscientific and justice could not be done to examinees while evaluating them. Students often had to depend on the whims of the examiners,? said an official. ?The new system has been designed in such a way that no student ? no matter what stream they belong to ? will have to depend on the wish of the examiner.?

Dutta pointed out that the new system would make the examination less stressful and establish parity in distribution of marks in all three streams. Earlier, she said, science students were required to write for only 80 marks. Their practicals carried 20. Whereas those studying non-lab subjects had to answer full 100 marks of essay-type questions.

To remove the disparity, the council has now divided the subjects into four categories ? laboratory-based, non-lab, commerce and language.

Copies of the revised question pattern will be sent to the council-affiliated schools after puja vacation. Dutta said to begin with, the institutions have been asked to hold their Class XI half-yearly examinations following the revised pattern.