Google helped UP Board come up with exam schedule for 2020 on July 1

Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad or UP Board did something on July 1 that it had never done before in its 98-year-old existence: It released the Board’s examination schedule for the next year on the very first day when schools reopened after summer vacation.

Deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, who is also UP’s secondary education minister, announced the examination schedule set to start from February 18, 2020 in the state capital.

However in making this possible along with the hard work and future planning capacity of Uttar Pradesh Board officials, the secret helper was none other than the popular global search engine: Google.

Usually the list of annual holidays for 2020 would have been released by the state government and the board would have then finalised the exam timetable keeping in mind the next year’s holidays in mind.

However to make declaration of time-table possible on July 1 itself, the board officials faced the unique challenge of being blind as far as list of holidays for the next year was concerned.

“So we decided to take help of popular search engine Google to zero in on the next year’s holidays and then finalised the timetable accordingly,” said UP Board secretary Neena Srivastava.

She said the guidance of Google allowed the officials to ensure gaps in the examination schedule of both high school and intermediate so as to ensure that no examination gets scheduled on a day on which the state government may be observing a holiday.

The secretary also shared this time there would be another first in the examination.

“We will conduct high school board exams for four new vocational subjects, including retail trade, security, automobile and Information technology enabled services for the first time in 2020. As per the timetable issued for exams starting February 18, 2020, the exams of these four subjects are scheduled to be held on March 3, 2020,” she added.

To encourage vocational studies, the state government had introduced these new subjects at the high school level last year. Earlier, these subjects were part of the course as detailed topics.

In a move to make declaration of results a quicker affair, the board has also decided to limit the total evaluation process of the high school and intermediate examination answer-sheets to mere 10 days from now on instead of 15 days taken earlier, she added.

The board exams would witness the evaluation process being held from March 15 to March 25, 2020. This would allow the board to complete the exams on March 6, 2020 and declared the results within a period of mere 45 days till April 25.