70% syllabus for Himachal Pradesh board exams

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, February 7

The Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education is preparing to conduct board examinations of class 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th in the state.

However, students in remote areas of the state are at disadvantage as they could not study online due to poor mobile signals or network problems in their areas.

Now, the board has decided to hold its examinations offline. To provide relief to the students, it has been decided that papers would be prepared from 70 per cent syllabus.

The Chairman of the education board, Dr Suresh Soni, said they had taken into consideration the fact that poor students and those located in the remote areas could not attend classes online regularly.

Dr Soni said model question papers had been uploaded on board website and the schools had been informed to help the students solve these papers so that they could do well in their board examinations. The idea was to prepare them before the final examinations.

He said question papers would be designed in such a manner that students did not face difficulty in getting pass marks. It had been decided that 40 per cent questions would be easy, 30 per cent moderately difficult and 20 per cent difficult or tricky.

In multiple choice questions, the students would be given 30 per cent

more choices.

The students in Bharmour and Pangi faced difficulty in taking online classes. They had to climb hilltops at places to attend their classes because of signal problems. In Jwalamukhi, a farmer had to sell his cow to buy a smartphone so that his children could take online classes.

Naresh Sharma, a teacher, said about 80 per cent students attended online classes regularly. The board had decided against promoting the students to the next classes without examinations but tried to help the students to clear their annual examinations.

The likely pattern

• Question papers will be designed in such a manner that students do not face difficulty in getting pass marks
• It has been decided that 40 per cent questions will be easy, 30 per cent moderately difficult and 20 per cent difficult or tricky
• In multiple choice questions, the students will be given 30 per cent more choices

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