Chennai: Govt school students not to travel more than 10 km

Chennai: The plus-1, plus-2 students studying in government schools throughout the state will not travel more than 10 km to write their board exams in March 2019.

The directorate of government examinations (DGE) has awarded more new examination centres to more than 10% of government higher secondary schools in the last two years.

In March 2017, the DGE had set up 2,427 exam centres for around 9 lakh students.

While introducing board exams for plus-1, the school education department increased the number of exam centres in the state to 2,794 for plus-1 and plus-2 students.

“In the previous year, roughly around 220 government higher secondary schools got additional exam centres. For next year, over 80 government schools will get new exam centres covering remote areas of the state,” sources said.

There are around 3,000 government higher secondary schools in Tamil Nadu.

“The directorate has awarded exam centres to 10% of total government schools to ensure that students won’t travel more than 10 km to write their board exams. It will save the travel time of rural students on exam days,” sources added.

Approximately 18 lakh students will sit for exams in both plus-1 and plus-2 exams.

As per the norms, the exam centre should have a minimum of 150 students. But this year, some government schools in remote areas got exam centres with less than 100 students.

While welcoming the decision to allot additional exam centres to government schools, some headmasters complained that the strength of government higher secondary schools is declining. “The schools which boasted student strength above 1,000 have been reduced to a few hundreds. The school education department should take steps to stop the decline in admissions,” they said.