Bhopal: New Guidelines Issued For Board Exams; QR Codes On Answer Booklets, No Supplementary Sheets

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education has introduced a new set of guidelines to maintain transparency and anonymity in the upcoming board exams.

This year, students will not receive supplementary answer sheets; they will have to write answers to all questions in a single answer booklet. The main subjects will have answer booklets of 32 pages, while vocational and Sanskrit language subjects will have 20 pages. It has been decided to provide 8-page answer booklets to Class 10 students and 12-page answer copies to Class 12 students for practical examinations.

For mathematics, students will receive a 32-page graph booklet; no supplementary booklet will be provided. The Board has decided to introduce QR or bar codes on some subjects' answer sheets under the pilot project. The identity of the students will be hidden by putting barcodes on the answer sheets for mathematics, science and social science in class 10 and only Hindi language in class 12. After evaluation, the examiners will scan the QR code to upload the students’ marks online.

Additionally, for security reasons, the students will only be allowed to enter and exit the exam centre from one gate and all the students will be thoroughly checked by the assigned staff.

Krishna Deo Tripathi, secretary, MP Board, told Free Press that: “To ensure a smooth exam procedure, we have increased the number of pages in the answer sheet to prevent the need for supplementary materials. We have also put a designated box where students can themselves put any kind of cheating materials they are carrying so that they will not get caught afterwards.”

The class 10 board exams are scheduled to take place from February 5 to February 28, and the class 12 exams will take place from February 6 to March 4.