Principals allay SSC Hindi paper fears

Anuradha Gupte from Goregaon, a SSC student, is nervous about her Hindi exam today (March 3).

She is the first batch of students appearing for the examination under the new Secondary School Certificate (SSC) syllabus.

She said she fears the paper will be lengthy as Hindi has a vast syllabus.

“There are about 11 brief answers, prose and poetry, comprehension, letter writing, essay writing among others that has made the paper lengthy,” Gupte said.

She said she spent the last three days solving practice papers so that she could complete the paper on time.

Gupte batch mates do not have the previous year’s papers to refer and so they are completely clueless about weightage given to different topics.

Another student, Yogesh Sharma from St Xavier’s School, said he has set a time limit for every question. “I will not spend more than 15 minutes on my essay. I will not give more than 10 minutes to any answer. But I don’t know if I will be able to stick to the schedule,” said Sharma.

However, school principals said students need not worry as all the papers, including Hindi, will be student-friendly. “The paper will be student-friendly so that everyone can score well. The board has become lenient in setting the question paper,” said Ophelia Barreto principal, Podar International School (SSC) Santa Cruz.

Barreto advised students to read their text books thoroughly. “Students are more worried this year as it is the first year with the new syllabus. Students are also scared about questions like Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). But nothing will be asked out of the textbook,’’ she said.

Father Jude Fernandes, principal of Stanislaus High School, Bandra, echoed Barreto. “We are asking students not to worry about HOTS.  We have created awareness about such questions through workshops throughout the year.”