Testing time for 14 lakh Gujarat kids

The annual Class 10 (SSC) and Class 12 (HSC) board examinations conducted by the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Education Board (GSHSEB) started on Thursday throughout the state.

The first day of the exams passed off without any incident in Ahmedabad but as many as 51 incidents of exam-related offences are reported from other parts of the state. Sources said board
officials had also caught two dummy writers.

In Ahmedabad, however, the students appeared happy with the first day’s question papers of both Class 10 and Class 12 exams. Fabiola Rodrigues, a teacher of English at St. Xavier’s, Loyola Hall, said that the questions paper for English as the first language was quite satisfactory.

“From the students’ point of view, the questions were simple and well framed,” Rodrigues said. “There was nothing out of the syllabus. The only difficult part was the 18-line poem set in the ‘unseen comprehension’ section. The other questions were quite easy.”

Around 7.40 lakh students of Class 10 appeared in the first
language exam across the state. Among the languages for
which examinations were held are Gujarati, English, Marathi and Hindi.