The State School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) and vocational higher secondary education (VHSE) examinations resumed on Tuesday.
The VHSE examinations started in the morning, while the SSLC exams began at 1.45 p.m. Of the 56,345 VHSE Plus One and Plus Two students who registered, 55,794 appeared for the examinations in 389 examination centres across the State.
While the Plus One students sat for the Entrepreneurship Development paper, for the Plus Two students it was Entrepreneurship Development/General Foundation Course. As many as 4,22,077 of the 4,22,450 registered students appeared for the SSLC Mathematics paper in 2,945 centres, including the Gulf region and Lakshadweep.
Arrangements were made by the General Education Department for the examinations with the cooperation of the Health Department, police, district administrations, local self-government institutions, parent-teacher associations, and others.
Disinfection
Not just classrooms and furniture, the school premises too had been disinfected.
Students were asked to report to schools early enough so that crowding could be prevented and physical distancing fully observed. They were welcomed at the school gates with thermometers for thermal scanning and sanitisers. Both teachers and students donned masks, provided by Samagra Shiksha, Kerala, and the NSS.
Help desks were set up as part of school micro-plans for the exams. Only 20 students were seated in each classroom.
Police personnel and health workers were also deployed at exam centres.
Special arrangements such as separate classrooms and sanitised corridors (red channel) were created for students from outside the State and those in quarantine to sit for the examinations. Students in containment zones took the examinations at centres in the zones.
Travel plans
Schools had prepared micro plans for the exams, which included ascertaining travel plans of each student. Besides personal vehicles and school buses, Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses, boats, and vehicles of other departments such as Forest and Scheduled Tribe Development were used to ferry children to the exam centres.
Answer scripts were deposited in plastic bags and taken to valuation centres where they were stored separately to be opened only after seven days.
As many as 1,78,226 Plus One students and 1,66,143 Plus Two students will appear for the higher secondary examinations that will begin on Wednesday morning in 2,032 exam centres.
