SSC exams: Errors in hall tickets confuse students

Mistakes crop up despite schools having alerted the board; students forced to pay fine

Errors in the hall-tickets triggered panic among students appearing for language papers on day one of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams on Tuesday.

The hall-tickets of a few students were riddled with mistakes; they had the wrong medium of instruction, name and birth dates printed on them. The school principals were forced to make changes to the hall-tickets at the last minute.

“We faced a lot of problems while conducting the exam as many students had wrong information printed on their hall-tickets,” said Rajesh Pandya, senior teacher, Fatimadevi English School, Malad. “We had to get the hall-tickets corrected from the school principal.”

In one of the hall-tickets, for instance, the medium of instruction was wrongly mentioned as Gujarati, while the candidate’s medium of instruction was English. “If we had not corrected the hall-ticket, the child would have had to appear for the exam in Gujarati,” said Pandya.

The errors had cropped up despite the schools suggesting changes in the pre-list sent by the board before issuing the hall-tickets, added teachers. “Despite this, the students had to pay Rs 100 to the board authorities as fine to make the corrections,” said Pandya.

On the other hand, the board officials said that the students should have approached them sooner. “We had issued hall-tickets several weeks ago but students do not check them carefully. For this reason only we have given rights to the principals to rectify the mistakes at the last minute,” said Siddheshwar Chandekar, secretary of the board, Mumbai division including Thane, Raigad and Palghar.Adding to the chaos, some students misread the exam timetable and showed up for the wrong exam. “We received calls from students who had chosen their first language as English enquiring whether they had their exam today (Tuesday),” said Shrikant Shingare, counsellor manning the board helpline. “These students were mistaken because the exams started today, but we informed them that their papers were scheduled on Thursday and Saturday.