The Board of Secondary Education Manipur (BOSEM) has decided not to allow 96 total students of as many as 19 schools in the state appear in the High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) examination 2023 as the schools failed to submit the examination application form online within the stipulated time.
According to a BOSEM official, the decision was taken after much discussion with officials of the education department and the education minister.
The official noted that the move was the result of alleged negligence by school authorities. Their utter disregard for BOSEM rules and negligence had jeopardized the students’ academic future, he added.
“BOSEM had extended the last date of online application form submission on two separate occasions but the school authorities did not submit the forms for the 96 students during the allocated time,” the official said.
The official stated that the issue of non-submission of forms by school authorities came to light when the schools started to distribute admit cards for the exam.
Applications from schools urging BOSEM to accept fresh submissions started to pour in during the last week of February, the official added.
“The applications were way past the last date of form submission; all the data of submitted forms had been fed into the system and thus the matter was out of our hands,” the official said.
The official stated that the online form submission mode which was started in 2020 had three-four phases for schools to check if any of the HSLC candidates from their schools were missing.
The official alleged that the school authorities had neglected these steps and submitted their respective candidate lists without cross checking the numbers.
The official highlighted that the first notification for HSLC form submission was circulated on 13 December, 2023 which instructed schools to start the form submission process from December 20, 2022 till January 16, 2023 (without fine) and from January 17, 2023 to January 31, 2023 (with fine).
The official also pointed out that February 7 was the last date for form submission in the January 31, 2023 submission date extension notification which was further extended to February 10, 2023 via a BOSEM notification on February 7, 2023.
He, therefore, maintained that the 96 students will not appear in this year’s HSLC exam and asserted that the process to serve show cause notice to the 19 schools is underway.
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