The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has asked moderators for HSC exams to be lenient while checking maths and English papers. This is very bad on their part as the clever students will be affected...The average students would get the same marks as that of the clever ones for a answer that in unmatchable....

The Board says that they have asked to do so because of the pressure on Students...But do you expect exams to go like a smooth car ride on the express way?? No wayzz....of course not.....I myself a student feel that this is an unnecessary move...

"Instructions to 'overlook minor errors' were issued at a meeting of Mumbai moderators held in Vashi recently to inform them about their pre-and-post exam duties."

For letter-writing in English, moderators were told to give marks for small details like address, name, reference, subject, and introductory and sign-off lines like 'to...' and 'yours sincerely' etc. This means that even if the main body of the letter is riddled with errors, a student can get over 50% of the marks set aside for that question.

For maths, the moderators were told not to rely entirely on the final answers but to give marks for steps in case students had done these correctly, even if the final tally was incorrect

Chairman of the Board Dr Vasant Kalpande confirmed that they wanted to make life easy for students. "We have, as a general rule, asked moderators and chief moderators to go easy on certain subjects where, probably due to high stress levels, the students are not able to express themselves on paper despite knowing the answers," he said.

However, he added, there would be no compromise on the exam format. "There is no alternative to studies, and if students do not prepare well for the exams, we won't be able to help them," he pointed out. But is checking the paper liniently an alternative to low scoring marks???

The HSC exams began on February 21 and will end on March 5.