Voice recorders in UP exam halls

ALLAHABAD: To ensure that there is no cheating in the 2019 high school and intermediate examinations, the UP Board has now made installation of digital voice recorders mandatory in every examination hall of all government-aided and self-financed schools.

With this move, the UP Board, considered one of the largest examination bodies in the world, has earned the distinction of being the only such body in the country to make CCTV cameras with DVRS mandatory to curb the use of unfair means. UP Board secretary Neena Srivastava said that the decision to equip the existing CCTV cameras in schools with DVRS came after instances of invigilators and other staff reciting solved answers from a corner of the examination hall (which was out of the CCTV’S range) were reported in the 2018 exams.

Mass copying has been a challenge for both the state government as well as UP Board for the last several years.

After Yogi Adityanath took charge, he supervised the 2018 UP Board exam preparations by chairing video-conferencing meetings with the district administration officials as well as board officials. In 2018, strict anti-copying measures resulted in an all time high dropout rate as 10,06,408 (15.15 %) of the total 66,39,268 students didn’t appear for the exams. Another 1,146 were caught using unfair means while 136 FIRS were lodged against examinees, invigilators and center superintendents for indulging in use of unfair means.

The anti-copying measures, implemented for the first time in over nine-decade existence of the board, included allotment of examination centres through an online process, roping in STF sleuths of UP Police, and deploying armed police personnel at centres.