The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) has decided to lay down a policy to stop malpractices in exams.
The board has summoned all the regional board officials to its headquarters at Pune on Monday to appoint ‘local vigilance committees’ at different centres - comprising parents, police and government officials, apart from education department officials.
It is no secret that the SSC and HSC exams conducted by the board are riddled with malpractices, including what is called mass copying.
The worry about exam malpractices is so great that during the last HSC exams, the board doubled the number of ‘flying squads’ to monitor students during the English language paper - the subject with the highest failure rate in the exams.
The Mumbai board alone has more than 1,000 exam centres with approximately 250 students in each.
Apart from Mumbai, the board has regional boards in Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nashik, Latur, Kolhapur and Amravati.
Board officials have said that they are planning stringent measures to curb copying and cheating cases in the exam hall.
“For the first time, we will appoint local vigilance committees and also involve officials from other government departments like police in the exams so that there can be better vigil during exams,” said Ujwala Patil, chairperson of MSBSHSE.
Explaining the role of a local vigilance committee, Patil said, “Before January 15, we will appoint a committee for every exam centre. During every paper, the committee will keep a watch on the centre from a place that will be 100 feet away from the exam centre.”
“For Mumbai division, it may be difficult to deploy local vigilance committees because there is no problem of people coming to exam centres to help students. We will discuss what kind of other provisions can be made by the board to curb cheating. For Mumbai, we may study the feasibility of local vigilance committee or adopt different measure to curb malpractices,” she added.
