BHUBANESWAR: With the number of new Covid-19 cases coming down considerably, the Odisha government on Friday announced that the annual high school certificate (HSC) examination for Class X students will be held from April 29 to May 6. Other board examinations, State Open School Certificate Examination and Madhyama (Sanskrit), will also be conducted in the same schedule.
Announcing the decision, Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra said that the examination or summative assessment-II will be mandatory for all students.
Students will take the exam in one subject in one day instead of two sittings. Also, the students will appear in the crucial examination in their own schools. Such a decision has been taken to ensure that the students do not waste time or face
any inconvenience, he added.
The Chief Secretary said that if it will not be possible to be conduct examination in a school, provision will be made to ensure that the test will be held in a nearby school. He said that teachers from other schools will be deployed during
the examination.
Assessment of the students’ performance will be evaluated by adopting three methods. The highest mark obtained by a student from these three evaluation methods will be published as his/her final result.
As per the first method, the weightage secured by a student in summative assessment-1 and internal assessment will be doubled for announcement of the result. In the second method, the weightage secured in the summative assessment-II will be doubled. The third method announced by the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) is new. As per the new method, a student will get 20 percent weightage fom internal assessment, 30 percent from summative assessment-I and 50 percent from summative assessment-II. According to the BSE, the first two methods are alternative method assessments.
According to Mohapatra, the state government has come up several measures to provide relief to students keeping in view the impact of Covid-19 on the mental health of the children by coming up with the alternative assessment system.
The examination schedule was announced by the BSE after detailed discussions with students, teachers, members of different teachers’ association, guardians and members of different association of parents, educationists and officials of the
education department.