An extra hour and a minimum of three days gap between papers will be given to special category students, including the hearing and speech impaired, who are going to appear in Class 10 and Class 12 exams of Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) this year. The Board exams will commence from 1 March and will continue till 21 April.

Talking to reporters during his Gwalior visit, chairman of MPBSE and additional chief secretary (ACS) S R Mohanti said extra time will be granted to disabled students to finish the exam.

Such students appearing in the Class 10 and 12 board exams will get 60 minutes extra time for a paper of 3 hours duration. Such examinees can also use formatted laptops and tablets. A gap of at least hree days has been fixed between each paper. The timing of the exams for such students has also been kept separate, Mohanti said.

The exams for regular course candidates of Class 12 will begin from 1 March and will end on 3 April, whereas for ‘special category’ students the exam will start on the same date but finish on 21 March. The Class 10 exams will start from 5 March and continue till 31 March and 7 April respectively for regular and disabled students.

A total of 19.19 lakh students are registered to appear in this year’s MP board exams. These include 11.48 lakh appearing for class 10 exams and 7.69 lakhs students for class 12 exams.

“The MPBSE has always been a student-friendly board that endeavours to make examinations stress-free and hassle-free for all categories of students, without degrading the standard of education.

Perceiving the significance of education, the Board has taken special initiatives for disabled students, letting them appear in examinations conveniently, while maintain the norms of the examinations,” Mohanti said.

“Examinations are difficult for everyone but much more for the disabled students. So we are all set to conduct exams smoothly in the entire state,” the chairman of MPBSE added.

Students who are affected by problems of visual impairment, dyslexia, hearing Impairment, physical handicap, spastic or autistic, and other disabilities, come under the ‘special category’.