Around 6.5 lakh Class XII students wrote the first of their two-semester Class XII board examinations on Monday.

This was the first time the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) had conducted the Class 12 board exams in a semester format, following the implementation of the new state education policy.

Monday’s exam, a part of the third semester, featured multiple-choice questions. Students marked their answers on OMR sheets and will be assessed by computers.

The council will upload the scanned images of the OMR sheets to its website within 72 hours of the publication of the results, allowing examinees to view their evaluation.

Images of OMR sheets will be uploaded to keep the evaluation process transparent.

Council officials said they drew lessons from the fiasco that led to the cancellation of the entire 2016 panel to select teachers for secondary and higher secondary levels in government-aided schools by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

The council had introduced a four-semester Plus II course in 2024.

These students wrote the first two semesters, conducted by the schools, in Class XI.
The state HS council will conduct the two semesters in Class XII.

The 1-hour 15-minute first language examination with multiple-choice questions (MCQ) started at 10am, and was conducted without any disruption, the council said.

Non-lab-based subjects will have 40 questions.

In their Class XI first-semester examinations in September 2024, these students answered MCQs on OMR sheets, but the schools assessed the scripts manually.

When the council president visited an examination centre in Salt Lake on Monday, he was surrounded by a section of guardians who questioned Chiranjeeb Bhattacharya about the delay in the arrival of textbooks for the third semester. It robbed the students of preparation time, the parents complained.

“It is true that textbooks in some subjects arrived late. This is why we uploaded the contents of the books on YouTube, so that teachers could access the content and conduct classes. I told the guardians that the council has recently opened a book mart in the council office. They can come to the council office and collect the books,” Bhattacharya told reporters.

Swapan Mandal of the West Bengal Teachers’ and Employees’ Association did not want to blame the late arrival of books for the lack of preparation time.

“These days, students hardly come to school. Attendance is poor, and completing the syllabus on time is missing. Schools fudge attendance figures so students can write the examinations,” Mandal alleged.

Metro reported on February 27 that students detained the head of a government-aided school in Behala and several other teachers through the night after being barred from writing their Class XI second-semester exams for not having the required attendance.

The protest started at Behala High School when the school authorities announced that 80 students of Class XI would not be allowed to take the examinations because they did not have 50 per cent attendance. The school later buckled under pressure from guardians.

The council this year has two sets of questions in some of the 66 subjects on which the board examinations are being held, as part of a security feature.

“The council did not have to use the second set on Monday,” council president Bhattacharya said.

The council president told Metro: “If the results of the third-semester exams are published on October 31, the scanned images of the OMR sheets will be uploaded by November 3. It will be shared with the individual schools so the students can access their OMRs. If students have any complaints about their evaluation, their grievances would be immediately addressed.”

The fourth-semester examinations of Class XII students will be held in March 2026.

Grade cards will be issued by combining the results of the third and fourth semesters.