More than four lakh students have appeared in the state for the High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) and High Madrassa Examinations which commenced on 16 February.
The examination will be conducted across 852 examination centres in the state which will allow a total of 4,53,533 candidates to appear in the examinations. Seventy one centres have been identified as “vulnerable centres” by the authorities.
Further, in order to keep proper vigil outside the centres, five flying squads have been appointed which will consist of circle officers and officials from the education department and the police, informed education department authorities.
According to an official, supervising officers would also be engaged with every examination centre. They will be tasked with monitoring the day-to-day examination and sending reports to the inspector of schools on the same day.
Further CCTV cameras have been installed in each examination centre.
Controller of examinations at the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA), Nayan Jyoti Sarmah, said that the mathematics answer sheets would be evaluated digitally.
Further, from this year the question papers would be made available to students in five different languages and SEBA has made black ink mandatory for the students to answer questions.
Officials added that the students would not be allowed to leave the examination hall before two hours of the commencement of the examination and high-power LED lights have been installed in all examination halls.
Sarmah informed that they have an existing set up of computer laboratories where digital evaluation of mathematics paper were being conducted currently. “There are 11 specialised evaluation zones for mathematics all over Assam. Out of this, two evaluation centres have been set up in Guwahati”.
In total, SEBA has set up 852 evaluation centres for evaluating answer scripts for the HSLC examination for the current year. The size of the monitor screens for evaluators will also be larger this time to eliminate scope of errors.
In 2016, around 600 answer scripts of the HSLC examination were destroyed in a fire at a school in Jorhat triggering widespread protests by student organisations and parents of candidates across the state. The government had also ordered a CID probe into the matter.
Officials said that the digital database will ensure that the answer booklets are secure and not prone to any physical damage.
Additionally, from this year onwards, the authorities have also introduced additional security measures in admit cards to eliminate the rampant proxy cases during examinations which have been discovered over the years.
“Some of the new features include high resolution border, micro lining, watermark and copy and check which cannot be replicated in counterfeit admit cards,” said an official from the examination department of SEBA.
“For the first time, we have also laid special emphasis to ensure fool-proof security of admit cards this year."
