Over 8 lakh will take Plus Two exams from today

This will be the first batch of students to take the test under a revamped State board syllabus

Students writting the Language paper at the start of the State Board Plus Two Exam at a School in Chennai on March 01, 2019. Photo: K. Pichumani

From Monday, nearly 8.16 lakh school students across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will start writing the Plus Two examinations. Following the revamp of the State board syllabus, this is the first batch of students that will be taking the exams.

A total of 8.35 lakh candidates, including private candidates, will write the exams. In the absence of a blueprint for exams for classes X, XI and XII this year, the Education Department had said that questions could be asked from any lesson for any number of marks.

While model question papers were made available, the Department has made it clear that it should be used only for reference and is not a blueprint of the final paper.

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These are the steps taken by the Education Department to ensure that students read the full syllabus and develop a better understanding of concepts, instead of resorting to rote learning, a teacher from a government school in Chennai said, hoping that evaluation methods would reflect the changes.

Coaching sessions

The last few weeks in the run-up to the public exams were spent by students attending coaching sessions with their teachers, and brushing up on concepts which they felt needed attention.

“We have had revisions and special coaching classes for slow learners in the last few weeks. Our general advice to students has been that they should not start studying any concept that is new and unfamiliar to them before the exam. It is better they revise and strengthen the concepts they already know,” said G.J. Manohar, headmaster, M.C.C. Higher Secondary School.

“With the new syllabus for the Plus Two students this term, teachers had to put in a fair bit of preparation to effectively cover the full portions. To train the teachers, we roped in subject experts from colleges and other schools,” said K.R. Nandakumar, State general secretary, Tamil Nadu Nursery Primary Higher Secondary Matriculation and CBSE schools.

On Sunday evening, the education helpline 14417 had language teachers answering the doubts of students. On the days before every exam, the Education Department said that teachers would be available in the evenings to answer queries of students.