As exams are underway

The secondary and senior secondary exams are underway. The students of three classes, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th are writing exams as per the date sheets issued by the JK Board of School Education. It is not a small number – around 2.5 lac students are appearing in these exams. JKBOSE, as the organising body for these exams, has a huge responsibility to shoulder.  Making arrangements, from registering the students to issuing roll number slips, from preparing question papers to distributing answer books among students on the day of exams, from assigning exam centre to arranging human resource to oversee the actual exercise – it is a layered management.

True, it is a spread out exercise and includes multiple elements, but it is not the first time the Board is conducting these exams. It has now been many decades, and should now figure as a routine in the BOSE management. That holds the institution responsible for granular detail. The quantum of experience the Board has accumulated over these decades, and the availability of human and material resource generated over time, should not leave anything to chance. The organisers must have each single detail measured, mapped and duly taken care of.

Though we have adequate number of government and private schools where the exam centres are located, the facilities are not evenly distributed. There are some centres where the space and seating is adequate, but there are centres where the case is reverse. The authorities, before identifying exam centres should ensure that the school is visited well before to take a decision on whether it qualifies to be an exam centre or not.

JKBOSE can raise the flag well before exam time and ask the relevant government departments to ensure that the necessary facilities are put in place. If the centre identified is in a government school, the onus is directly on the government. In case it is an unaided school, that we in common parlance call private schools, it is incumbent on the concerned government departments to see whether the school has the necessary resource to put in place the facility, or it needs to be helped.

Unless JKBOSE does this exercise well before designating exam centres the complains regarding inadequate facilities will keep surfacing up at the time of exams.