BHUBANESWAR: The Annual Higher Secondary Examination (AHSE) 2023 of Plus II final year students will begin on Wednesday amid tight vigil to check malpractice and ensure smooth conduct of the test. Around 3.57 lakh students, 3.38 lakh regular and 17,702 ex-regular, from 1,590 higher secondary schools will appear for the exams in offline mode.
As many as 2,33,855 students from Arts, 93,894 from Science and 24,331 from Commerce have been enrolled for the exams. Besides, little over 5,800 students have also been enrolled for the exams in vocational studies. Students of 445 HHSs, including self-financing institutes, where there is no provision for setting up exam centres, have been tagged to their nearby centres.
The exam will be held for the Odia paper of Science stream on the first day and Arts and Commerce streams on the second day. Exam for the vocational studies will commence on March 3. Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) officials said the exam will take place in two phases from March 1 to 10 and March 20 to April 5. Question papers of all sittings in the first phase have been dispatched to all 202 examination hubs. The provision of CCTV monitoring of exam halls has also been made in all 1,145 examination centres to prevent malpractice and make the examination process transparent, said CHSE controller of examinations Ashok Kumar Nayak.
Besides, flying squads comprising education officials and teachers have been formed to check on the higher secondary schools. The squads have been formed at hub and zonal level, while central squads will also make surprise visit, Nayak said. Meanwhile, the School and Mass Education department and the CHSE heaved a sigh of relief after the agitating 662 category teachers agreed to participate in the Plus II examination invigilation, from Friday.
The teachers’ association that had been staging protest in the state capital seeking equal grade pay, pension and remuneration at par with 7th pay commission recommendation, took a decision to extend conditional support in smooth conduct of the exams after a discussion with the government on Tuesday.
“Realising that our demands are genuine, an inter-ministerial committee has been formed to discuss the points we have raised and take a decision between March 10 and 12. Accordingly, we have decided to cooperate in examination invigilation and management. However, the token protest at Mahatma Gandhi marg will continue and we will request the state government to resolve our issues by March 12,” said association convenor Golak Nayak.