ICSE and ISC 2015 will begin on February 27 and February 9, respectively.

The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations announced the timetables for the two exams on Thursday afternoon.

ICSE examinees will begin with English paper on February 27 and write their last exam on March 30.

For ISC, the practical exams begin on February 9 with physics, while the theoretical papers are scheduled from February 18 to April 1. The first day’s exam is sociology.

The complete schedules are available at www.cisce.org, in the notice board section.

Sources in the council said schools across the country had appealed that the ISC science exams be wrapped up by March 20 to give students enough time to prepare for engineering entrance exams, which begin in early April.

“We tried, but it was difficult to slot all science papers before March 20. We have chemistry Paper I (theory) on March 20 and biology Paper I (theory) on March 25,” said a source in the council.

According to some school principals, since the practical papers begin as early as February 9, it will give students little time to prepare between the pre-boards and the boards.

“The pre-boards are generally held in January when schools reopen after the winter vacation and end by the last week of the month. By the time results are declared, it is early February. Students then are left with only a few days to prepare before their board exam starts,” said the principal of a school in south Calcutta.

But when the principals had raised the issue, the council had reasoned that the board exams must begin early for them to finish well before entrance tests for engineering colleges.

Some schools in the city had also raised the issue of both ICSE and ISC papers being scheduled for March 13. It could be a logistic problem for schools since most of them have a single hall for board exams.

ICSE second language papers are scheduled from 11am to 2pm on March 13. The ISC political science exam is scheduled the same day, from 2pm.

“The exams will overlap because by the time ICSE students will be out of the hall, it will be well past 2pm. We will have to co-ordinate with the convener to sort this out,” said Sunirmal Chakravarthi, the principal of La Martiniere for Boys.

Schools believe that instead of slotting two three-hour papers on a day, the council could have kept a two-hour paper.

“When there are back-to-back exams like this, the council allows us to start 15 minutes late. Besides we have a handful of girls, about 30, who will write the political science paper. They can be accommodated in a separate classroom,” explained R. Bhattacharya, acting principal of Modern High for Girls.

“That is a difficult option for us because students of other classes would be writing their annual exams then. We prefer to keep the board students segregated from the rest of the school,” said Chakravarthi.