Class XII students of the State board and CBSE were a relieved lot after their first examination on Friday.
Many of them said the Language-I and English papers were easier than expected.
Over 50,000 students from 406 higher secondary schools in Chennai registered to appear in the State Board higher secondary class XII examinations. The exam venues were spread across 140 centres, according to the directorate of government examinations.
State board student, P.S. Sharon Mercy, said the Tamil paper was a cakewalk and she would easily score over 90 marks. “I had revised question papers from the past four years, and most of the one-mark questions were from the previous years,” she said.
Another private candidate from the same centre said the Hindi paper was just as easy. “Fortunately, the questions in most sections were from previous years’ papers,” she said. Yashna Chabria, who also opted for Hindi, said, though easy, the question paper was lengthy. “I was writing till the last minute,” she said. The French-I paper, too, was no different in terms of difficulty levels, said T. Adithya Sharma.
Akshaya P., a visually-impaired student, said she studied very hard for the Tamil exam and was nervous about not getting a good scribe. “But I got a wonderful scribe and had enough time,” she said.
While her school provided her with Braille textbooks and constant support, her parents recorded model question papers and previous years’ papers in mp3 format, she said.
“However good a scribe may be, there is always the risk of errors such as spelling mistakes, for instance,” she said. With some practise, she would like to use a software like JAWS (Job Access with Speech) to write examinations herself, Akshaya said.
An official from the directorate of government examinations said six students were caught for malpractices in Tamil Nadu, of who, two were from Chennai. “Both were private candidates. Otherwise, the exam went off smoothly,” the official said.
Students who wrote the CBSE exam too were mostly pleased, and happy it began with the English paper. Over 7,000 candidates registered for the class XII exam in the city. It was conducted in 28 centres, according to the CBSE.
For many of them, it was their first shot at a board exam as their batch had the option of choosing between the school-based and board-based exam in class X. While one student said he finished the English paper 30 minutes ahead of time, some others said they had just enough time to complete the paper.
Jayshree S., who wrote the school-based exam in class X, said she was quite anxious ahead of the examination, but was relieved after she went through the paper.
Shreya Ambare, another student, said the value-based question, introduced this year by the Board for 5 marks, was quite easy.
D.T. Sudarshan Rao, regional officer, CBSE, said the examinations went off well and no malpractices were reported at any of the centres in the city. Starting this year, the CBSE gave its visually-impaired students the option of writing the examination with the help of JAWS.
However, Mr. Rao said no candidate had registered for it in the region so far.
(With inputs from Sunitha Sekar)
