Maharashtra HSC SSC Board Exams 2021: The exams are scheduled for April-May (representational photo)
Maharashtra SSC (Class 10) and HSC (Class 12) board exams will be held offline from next month, School Education Minister Varsha Gaikwad said on March 20. While HSC exams are scheduled to start from April 23, SSC (Class exams in the state will begin on April 29. The exams will go on till the last week of May. Students will be allotted additional time to write papers, the minister said.
Read|| States Close Schools, Promote Students Without Exams Amid COVID Surge
Students will have to physically go to the examination centres to appear for the board exams, the School Education Minister said.
"The schools of the students will be their exam centres. Apart from the regular three-hour period of the exam, they will get an extra half an hour to attempt the questions," Ms Gaikwad said.
The practical exams will be held once the written tests are over, Ms Gaikwad added.
Usually, Maharashtra board exams are held in February-March, but the schedule this year has been changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional time for written exams
Candidates will be given an additional 30 minutes to answer an 80 marks paper and 15 additional minutes to write a 40 or 50 marks paper.
Students who could not appear in Maharashtra HSC, SSC exam 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions will be given another opportunity to appear in it in June, the minister said.
“There will be no separate fees for the special exam for COVID-19 affected students. However, this exam will be held only in select examination centres and the gap between papers will be lesser,” Ms Varsha Gaikwad said.
No practical exams for Class 10
Practical exams of the Class 10 Science paper have been cancelled. Students will be evaluated on the basis of internal assessments.
However, practicals will be held for Class 12 students and the number of experiments have been reduced to only five or six this year.
“Conducting practicals in school has been tough this year and therefore we have decided that students need to be given a concession here. That is why, to start with, we have decided to do away with science practical exams for SSC, replacing them with internal assignments,” the School Education Minister said.
Class 10 students will have to submit their internal assignments in the respective schools after written exams between May 21 and June 10. An additional grace period of 15 days will be provided to students falling sick during the submission period. There will also be special concessions for differently abled students.