COIMBATORE: Besides the question paper, private candidates who will be appearing for the board exams next month will have to overcome the anxiety of facing regular students as the Directorate of Government Examination (DGE) has scrapped the practice of allotting separate exam centres for them, allegedly due to shortage of funds.
According to sources in the DGE, around 56,000 private candidates will be writing class X, XI and XII board exams across the state in 5,500 centres along with school students.
Sources said the DGE merged the centres as part of a cost cutting exercise. “Around 330 to 350 centres for private candidates have been scrapped across the state,” sources added.
An assistant director in the Directorate of Government Examination told TNIE on the condition of anonymity, “If there is a centre for private candidates, officers should deploy additional teachers for exam duty. Besides, there will be additional cost in the electricity usage, transport for the question paper and answer sheet, etc. Considering this, officers of DGE took this decision,” he added.
“Even though centres are merged, private candidates will be sitting in a separate hall," C Varun, a private candidate who will write his class XII Maths exam, said “Separate centres will not make us feel we flunked and are writing the arrear exam. There are chances of regular students teasing us.”
DGE S Sethurama Varma said, “Due to administrative reasons, centres for private candidates have been merged. It will not affect private candidates.”