CISCE to conduct board exams in hybrid mode: Report

NEW DELHI: The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) has released a new circular for exams. It has also asked schools to allow students to choose offline or online exams, as per a report from the Bangalore Mirror.

While several schools are insisting to conduct offline exams for students. CISCE has said that students can write their first semester exams either from home or school, the report said. The first semester exams are scheduled to be held in November, December.

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Gerry Arathoon, the chief executive and secretary of the council said: "While the preference is to write the exam at the school with consent from parents, the exam can also be written from the candidate’s home. For the smooth conduct of the online exams, there are certain requirements to be met for which schools need to provide details of the proctors, buffer proctors and also support IT executives. Every school has been asked to appoint at least one IT support executive to a maximum of three IT support executives."

"For example, if a school has 455 candidates, then the school has to appoint three IT support executives and two if the students are 190," Arathoon said, as per the report.

Schools have been asked to send details of the type of device that students will use to give the exam such as laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone, the report said. The device used by the candidate must have a camera, the report said.

Several parents prefer the exams to be held offline. Shivaranjani K who is a parent said: "We believe that covid is still in the air and this is not the right time to send our children to school. So, when there is an option, why not allow them to appear for exams from the home."

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Another parent said: "Other than covid, there is also an increase in the number of cases of dengue and viral fever. So, I too prefer that children write these tests from their homes."

Schools are also sending out instructions to students to explain that if students switch off their cameras during the exams, they will be penalised, the report said. For every five minutes of no video streaming, students will lose five marks.