It may have been a comparatively easy English paper for class XII CBSE students who wrote their first exam on Monday, but along and gruelling season lies ahead.
J.R. Shrividhya and V. Sahana of Vidya Mandir, Royapettah looked relieved after their first exam. Knowing the pattern of the paper helped, they said. “All our revision exams and sample papers had the same pattern, so it was not really that difficult,” they added.
Amita Khatawkar from Hindu Senior Secondary School was nervous before the exam, especially since the novel they had to study – Silas Marner – was difficult. “But, when I saw the questions, I realised that the whole thing was very easy. The paper was pretty long though,” she said.
But what many students and their parents were worried about was the lack of enough preparation time prior to some papers. According to Rekha Kole, whose daughter opted for the physics-biotech-chemistry-math stream at Sankara School, the biotech examination was right after the Physics paper on March 9. “She will have only half a day to prepare for the paper and just one day for the Chemistry paper that follows. We tried asking for a revision in the schedule, but were told that at least 1,000 such appeals need to be made,” she said.
While students are relieved that the English paper was easy, teachers continue to worry whether the rest of the exams will be as simple. According to R. Ramaswamy, director of Soundararaja Vidyalaya, the CBSE changing the exam pattern barely a month before the examination has made it difficult for students to cope.