8.76 lakh students to take Class 10 exams from today

Bengaluru: A total of 8.76 lakh students across Karnataka will take the Class 10 or Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examinations for the current academic year on Monday and July 22. As per the two-day scheduled timetable set by the Karnataka State Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB), on July 19, the core subject exam -- Science, Mathematics and Social Science will be held. On July 22, the examinations for languages would take place.

The duration of the Class 10 examinations will be for three hours and the examinations will be held on the OMR (Optical Mark recognition or Optical Mark Reading) sheets, where students will be asked simple and direct questions.

The OMR sheets will be of different colours so that there is no confusion among students while appearing for the examinations. The evaluation process is expected to be faster this year as there is no conventional method involved in finalizing the marks of the students.

During this academic year, a total of 8.76 lakh students have registered for the Class 10 examinations. Even though various state boards across the country have already cancelled their board examinations owing to the pandemic situation. But, Karnataka is among the few states which have agreed to conduct board examinations this year as incumbent batch SSLC students were promoted from Class 9 to Class 10 owing to the pandemic situation last academic year.

As a result of this, Karnataka Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar claimed that in absence of proper yardstick to assess the abilities of students, the state is forced to conduct this year's annual examination. Considering the ongoing Covid situation, the state government has also arranged transportation for children to reach the examination centres.