A total of 16,39,172 students will appear for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exam, which will begin on Tuesday. Taking cue from the ongoing leaks in the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations, the board has decided to take a tough stand regarding late admissions by students. “If you are late in reaching your examination centre, then you are already suspected in some possible copy case. Instead, it is important for students to reach on time and completely protect themselves from scrutiny,” said Maharashtra State Board’s Mumbai division secretary Subhash Borse. Indian Express,
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The strict attitude of the board is due to the cases of copying found during HSC exams in which pictures of question papers went viral on the messaging app. Students arriving late at the examination centers will not be allowed to appear for the examination without permission from the Mandal Board office, which will involve a thorough screening.
Out of 16,39,172 students who appeared for the paper across Maharashtra, 8,89,584 are boys and 7,49,478 are girls. The exam will be held at 21,384 centres. A total of 3,73,840 students will appear for the examination in Mumbai division.
This year, in view of the high stress level among the candidates, several student-friendly measures have already been introduced. The measures include having their own school as the exam centre, extra time to complete the paper, reducing the syllabus, distributing the question paper 10 minutes before the start of the exam. All these measures are due to a gap of one year in the board exams due to the pandemic. The last SSC exam was held in March 2020, before COVID-19 the outbreak.
In 2021, around the same time the exam was canceled due to the huge increase in the cases of COVID. The results were declared on the basis of internal assessment as well as marks obtained by the students in the previous academic years.