Over 8 lakh students to appear for plus-1 board exams from today

CHENNAI: After a gap of nearly four decades, over 8.63 lakh students in the state will write plus-1 board exams from Wednesday. In order to help students to cope with the exams like Neet and JEE which have more than 50 per cent of questions from plus-1 the state government converted the annual plus-1 exam as board exam from this year.

There were allegations that due to the omission of plus-1e subjects by private schools, students from Tamil Nadu are not faring well in the entrance exams. “The plus-1 exam will be conducted in the same exam centres where plus-2 exams are being held. Totally, 8,61,915 students from 7,070 schools appear for the exam. Apart from the regular students, 1,753 private candidates also appearing for the exam,” a release from the Directorate of Government Examinations said. Of the candidates 4,60,406 are girls and 4,01,509 are boys. Compared to boys 58,897 more girls are writing the exam.

Over 5.28 lakh students are appearing in science stream. From Puzhal central prison 62 prisoners are writing the plus-1 exam. The DGE has warned that the recognition of schools which indulge in malpractices will be canceled. To reduce the burden of students the school education department has reduced the total marks from 1,200 marks to 600 marks and the individual subject marks from 200 to 100 this year. The total exam time also reduced from 3 hours to 2.30 hours.