Bengal HS council adopts semester system in its entirety

Council President Chiranjib Bhattacharya told PTI on Wednesday that according to the format, the third semester exams will be held between September 8 and 22, having a one-hour-and-15-minute duration for each paper except for visual arts, music and vocational subjects.

The fourth semester exams will be held from February 12 to 27 next year, and candidates will be given the cumulative evaluation grade from these two semesters, he said.

The last exams in the annual system, conducted since 1978, was held in March this year. In the new format, Semesters one and three will be MCQ based before “to promote thinking and reasoning holistically.” Semester two and four will have SAQ (short answer question), and DQ (developmental quotient) to retain the writing abilities,” he said.

Bhattacharya said Bengal is the first state having fully adapted the semester-based education system at the plus two level.

“We have introduced new subjects which include Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Science of Well Being and Applied Artificial Intelligence. The semester system provides a greater flexibility for students in terms of course scheduling, allowing them to adopt a wider variety of courses,” he said.

The council has introduced programmes like BOOTSTRAP (a training programme on computer-based subjects), said Bhattacharya.

He said those who could not qualify in the recently conducted HS exams have been given the option to migrate to the new format, but their application has to be routed through their educational institutions and not individually. “We are giving the disqualified candidates a chance to adapt to the new system and do well,” he said.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) on May 7 declared the results for the West Bengal Board WBCHSE Class 12 at a press conference in the Vidyasagar Bhawan, Salt Lake, Kolkata. Students who took the West Bengal Class 12th board exams can download their results from the official websites — wbchse.wb.gov.in and wbresults.nic.in after 2 pm.

This year, 4,73,919 students appeared for their WBCHSE Higher Secondary exam; of them, 4,30,286 have passed, resulting in a pass percentage of 90.79%, a slight increase from last year’s 90%. This year, Science recorded a pass percentage of 99.46%, followed by Commerce with 97.52%, and Arts with 88.25%.