Mock drills held at exam centres

NEW DELHI : The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is considering different systems of delivering question papers to examination centres to contain leakages. And as one of the measures, schools in the national capital conducted a “mock drill” on Thursday.

During the “mock drill”, schools that are centres for the board examinations were sent a URL on the registered e-mail or mobile number of the superintendents concerned.

The schools were sent a pass- word using which they had to open the URL and print the question paper.

The notice said, “A mock drill will be carried out today at 2 pm in the respective examination centres for reconduct of examination in the subject Economics (Class –XII) and Mathematics (Class –X).”

All centre superintendents with computer staff and examination coordinators were asked to be present at the centre at 2 pm.

“Centres will open the URL and login by using the password. First password will be sent at 2.45 pm and second password will be sent at 3 pm for opening the ques- tion paper and print the same,” the letter sent to examination centres said.

Jyoti Arora, principal Mount Abu Public school, Rohini, said the process went smoothly at her school. “We were asked to print a set of 150 question papers on the spot after receiving the password,” she said.

A principal from a private school in Delhi said on condition of anonymity that it could be difficult to carry on with this system as it took them half an hour to print 150 sets. “My school is an examination centre for about 450 class 10 students so it will take us around 1.5 hours to complete the printing. There is a possibility of a leak happening during that time,” the principal said.

Other said that in rural areas, this may not work due to lack of internet connectivity and scarcity of printers in schools that can print a huge number of papers in a short time.

Earlier in the day, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar held a meeting with CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal before he held a press conference.

Later in the day, several meetings took place to finalise the retest dates and safety measures to conduct leak-proof exams.