CUTTACK: The annual Matriculation examination or the High School Certificate examination-2020 for regular and ex-regular students will be held across the State from February 19 to March 2.Announcing the schedule here on Tuesday, Board of Secondary Education (BSE) officials said Madhyama (Sanskrit) and State Open School Certificate (SOSC) examinations will be held simultaneously with the annual HSC test.
As per the schedule, the question pattern will be the same for regular and ex-regular students and examinations will be conducted simultaneously on the first sitting from 10 am to 12.30 pm, with 15 minutes extra time for mathematics paper.The examination for Madhyama and SOSC will be conducted from February 19 to 28 in the second sitting from 1.30 pm to4 pm. Practical examinations in painting, Home Science and Visual Art will be held on February 23, 29 and March 1 respectively from 10 am to 12 noon.
This year, the Board has abolished Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) answer sheet and introduced short questions, informed BSE president Ramashis Hazra.Apart from taking several steps for smooth conduct of HSC examination, a security code has been introduced in the questions to keep a tab on question papers going viral on social media. The security code will help in detecting the examination centre and also the examinee responsible for the offence towards making the question papers viral, he added.
First language Odia, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu and Alternative English will be held on February 19, second language examination English, Hindi and Environment and Population Education (only for hearing impaired candidates) will be conducted on February 22. Third language Hindi, Sanskrit, Odia and Parsi will be on February 24 while Mathematics, General Science and Social Science examinations will be held on February 26, February 28 and March 2 respectively.