Odisha Matric Exam Cancellation A Historic Blunder, Says OSSTA

Bhubaneswar: In the wake of the statewide uproar over the alleged faulty assessment of marks of the students by the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) in the annual Matric examination, the Odisha Secondary School Teachers’ Association (OSSTA) has said that the decision of the state government to cancel the offline examination was a historic blunder.

In a statement, OSSTA general secretary Prakash Chandra Mohanty maintained that there are no alternatives to the traditional offline examination.

“We had been reiterating that the students cannot get proper justice if they are deprived of the offline examination. We had also requested the government to direct the BSE to form an expert committee in line with the committee formed for the Plus II alternative evaluation to suggest and recommend a viable method of the evaluation. But the government and the Board took a decision to cancel the offline Matric examination without paying any heed to our proposal,” Mohanty pointed out.

Talking about the alternative assessment of marks, he said that prior to the announcement of the results, the government had said that the results will be published on the basis of 40 per cent of the offline marks of the students in Class IX and 60 per cent of marks out of the three practice tests in Class X. “We had given in writing to the government and the Board that the students will get less marks if these marks secured by them in Class IX are added.

Mohanty further demanded that the Board should make it public whether the marks have been awarded taking the marks of Class IX and X into account or only the marks of Class X, and finalise the highest mark between the awarded and the offline marks of Class IX.

Apart from this, he urged the government to conduct the entrance test of the Matric pass-out students for admission to the Plus II streams to ensure that the meritorious students will not be deprived of their higher studies.

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