R. Avantika has her class XII English paper scheduled on March 11 and on Saturday she was busy browsing through English sample question paper books with her mother at a bookstore on L.B. Road, Adyar. “I am prepared for the exam and my school has tested us enough. Going through the previous year's sample papers will be a revision. It is going to give me a better picture on questions they have asked,” says the student of Bala Vidya Mandir.
“Though the CBSE website has most of the previous year's question papers in all the subjects, I was not happy with what was available for English. So I decided to buy a book,” she adds.
A little help
Whether you are the type who studies at the eleventh hour or the average student or one with good grades all through the academic year, a little help is always welcome. That's what these question banks, sample papers, guides and reference book are about, say students.
Demand for such books peaks one to two months before the exams, but stores still get many students and parents on the week of the exam.
Peer pressure is another reason why many go looking for the best publisher.
Ali Akbar of Kamal Book Shop says there are parents who even make it the shop late in the night.
There is demand for more NCERT books this time, he notes. Most book stores says even with CBSE introducing Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), where a good amount of the evaluation takes place internally, the requirement for sample question papers continues. “In fact, the demand is more as parents are confused about the new pattern,” says K.A. Sajan, manager, PCM Book Shop in T.Nagar.
Out of stock
He says that the store has run out stock of the books brought out by a few publishers in subjects such as Maths and Science as they are most sought after. “I tell the students and parents coming close to the examinations that it would not be possible to get them soon as the books have to come from Delhi,” adds Mr. Sajan.
However, publishers such as Goyal Brother Prakashan think the scope for selling such books is less with internal evaluation and much of the material available online. “Today, 30 per cent of our books are in the multi-media format,” says S.K. Das, Regional Marketing Manager, Goyal Brother Prakashan.
