COIMBATORE: Teachers alleged that question paper from Classes 6 to 12 for the first mid-term test was not sent to the schools on Tuesday morning as there was a delay in sending the papers to the nodal centre. Due to this, most schools in the city postponed the morning session of the test, while some schools conducted the test along with the additional subject in the afternoon.
A teacher from a government high school (aided) told TNIE, “The Tamil test was scheduled from 11.15 am to 12.30 pm, but as the question papers didn’t reach the schools from the nodal centre, the students couldn’t appear for the exams. Also, the students could not prepare for the next examination for Mathematics in the afternoon.”
“The question papers reached the schools after 1 pm, due to which we were forced to conduct both exams consecutively. The exam was held till 5 pm in some schools,” he alleged. He said that the district-level exam was conducted for 50 marks with a 1.15-hour duration.
According to sources, last year, there was a practice that officers will send question papers to the school’s e-mail id and teachers would take a printout of the question and distribute it to the students. “But, as the printout cost was high, the department decided to send the question paper to schools from the nodal centres in the district this year,” sources said.
“We suspect that the department did not pay the printer. Due to this, it could have been delayed in sending the question paper to the department. When contacted, Coimbatore school education examination convener Rajendran said they received a complaint from schools. Repeated attempts to reach the Chief Educational Officer L Sumathi went in vain.