The Odisha government Thursday announced that the annual Plus-II (Class 12) board examinations for Arts, Science, Commerce and Vocational streams will be held in offline mode from April 28.

The examinations will be held in one sitting from 9 am in view of the possible heatwave conditions, an official release said

Over 3,20,000 students will appear for the examinations being conducted by the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE). The practical exams will be conducted internally by the respective higher secondary schools under the supervision of their own teachers, the statement said.

While justifying the practical examination to be conducted internally, the statement said: “The state government is aware of the difficult situations that the student community has undergone due to COVID-19 pandemic and decided to take certain sympathetic steps.”

Weightage of 20 per cent in both theory and practical examination will be given from the performance of the students in quarter end examinations which were conducted by the schools internally. For this purpose their performance in best two internal tests out of three shall be taken into account, it said.

The merit of the students will be assessed in two separate schemes in a paper – performance of the candidates based on his performance only in annual HSE and 80 per cent weightage on the basis of performance in annual HS and 20 per cent weightage from the performance in quarter end examinations.