February 28, 2013, 12:00 am
From this year the Central Board of Secondary Education has reduced the number of chances students of classes X and XII will receive to improve performance or clear the exam. The changes in compartment and improvement rules will be effective for the 2013-14 batch of students who will take the exam from March 1, 2013. To facilitate visually impaired candidates , the board has allowed them to bring their own computer with relevant software to the examination centre.
Announcing the change in the number of compartment chances for Class XII students, chairman of the board Vineet Joshi said that from now on candidates will get three chances instead of five to clear the exam. The number of improvement of performance attempts for Class X students, too, has been reduced to one from five. Candidates shall appear for the improvement of performance attempt to be conducted by the board in July. The new rules, however, will not be applicable to students who have appeared in 2012 and earlier. They will continue to get up to five chances.
Visually impaired candidates appearing for exams will be permitted to use computer software for the examination from this year but must bring their computer with the relevant software to the centre. Candidates using computer software would not be provided with a writer and will be allotted examination centre only in the city where the regional office is located.
This year, too, special category students appearing for Class X and XII board exams shall be allowed additional time of 60 minutes for a paper of 3 hours, 50 minutes for a paper of two-and-a-half hours, 40 minutes for a paper of 2 hours and 30 minutes for a paper of one-and-a-half-hour duration.
A total of 9,42,035 candidates have registered for the Class XII board exams across three streams this year which is up by 15.51% from 2012. The number of registered candidates in Class X rose by 6.7% to touch 12,59,202 candidates. In all, students of 11,863 secondary schools and 7,917 senior secondary schools will be taking the boards this year.
CBSE has introduced facilities to schools to generate online roll number-wise lists of candidates. The school can also generate online admit card for their regular students.
