The ever-increasing number of examinees in the School Leaving Certificate examination has troubled the authorities in a new way.

The godown at the Exam Controller’s Office (OCE) has space only for answer sheets of one iteration of exams. Since the papers need to be kept safe for one-year period, for a few months, two batches of them need to be accommodated. This has compelled officials to seek place to keep answer sheets of the exams that concluded on Friday. The Education Regulations require the OCE to preserve all answer papers for one year since the completion of the exam.

“This provision compels us to manage space for the answer books of two batches,” said Ganesh Dhakal, deputy exam controller. “There is no use of preserving the copies for so long.”

According to the OCE, records of around 3.2 million answer sheets for eight subjects were used for 404,009 examinees last year.

Students can apply for re-totalling within 35 days of results publication and those who are not satisfied with their new results can apply for the photocopies of their marked answer sheets within 15 days. “It takes hardly three months for all the process,” he said.

Dhakal said his office has written to the Ministry of Education for an amendment to the provision, cutting the storage period down to six months. Earlier, there was no problem in handling the copies of two years as the number of examinees was around 300,000, which has now reached half a million.

A total of 566,085 students were registered for the school-end exams this year.

source: the himalayan times,31 march 2014