Pune: The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) will conduct the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC - Class XII) and Secondary School Certificate (SSC - Class X) examinations from February 26 and March 5, 2009 respectively.

"The HSC practicals, orals and grade examinations will be conducted from February 6 to 24, and the written exam will be held from February 26 to March 21", informed an official from the Board.

The SSC practicals, orals and grade exams will be conducted during February 12 to 28 and the written examinations will commence from March 5 and end on March 23.

The examinations will be conducted by the Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Mumbai, Kolhapur, Amravati, Nashik and Latur divisional boards.

Minimum Competency-based Vocational Course (MCVC) examination of the HSC will be held as per the new syllabus.

March 2009 will be the last chance for students of the old syllabus, who could not clear the exam last time, to clear the examinations.

Exams of the old and new course of MCVC will be conducted during the same period and time but separate time tables will be released as the names of some subjects have been changed in the new course.

The Marathi paper for the SSC exam for regulars and repeaters will be based on the newly released textbook 'Kumar Bharati va Vachanpaath'.

"The multiple question paper system will be followed for English third language and Maths for the SSC exam and for English of the HSC exam. However, the difference in the multiple question papers will be roughly 30 per cent in the textbook based questions only", the official added.

Students who are repeating the SSC exam as per the old syllabus will get 100 mark question papers for science and social science. However, in the old syllabus these subjects had question papers of 150 marks.

So the marks obtained by repeaters in the March 2009 exam will be converted accordingly so that the grand total of all subjects remains 750 as per the old course.

The SSC and HSC students will get marks out of 40 for projects done under the environment education subject, while the written test of the subject will carry 60 marks. Students have to secure minimum 14 marks for the project and 21 marks in the written test to clear the subject.

Physically challenged and spastic students will give the SSC exam for home science and physical science subjects as per the new curricular.

Students will have to secure a minimum grand total of 105 marks in all the three languages in the SSC exam to clear the subjects.

However, if a student fails in one language but secures minimum 25 per cent marks in the language, he will be given concession in passing marks, only once, provided he/she has appeared for exams of all three languages.

The detailed time table of the exams will be announced soon and will be available at: www.MaharashtraEducation.net/ExamSchedules.