The Bengal Higher Secondary council has sent a circular to heads of all schools asking them to make their students practise how to write answers within a prescribed word limit in the Plus-II board examinations.

The word limit for every question will have to be strictly maintained by students because they will have to write the answers of every question in the space to be provided in the question paper for the first time next year.

Higher Secondary examinees were asked to answer questions within a certain number of words even before.

But schools have been asked to make their students “more cautious” about strictly following the prescribed word limit this time, Mahua Das, the president West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, said.

Till the 2019 exam, when separate answer scripts were used in the Plus-II examinations, the word limit was mentioned against some questions. But students would often exceed the limit. Sometimes, students would write as many as 300 words to answer a question for which the word limit was 100 words, said an official.

“Students cannot be allowed to write beyond the specified word limit in the changed system like they did before. If 100 words get allotted for a question, the space that would be provided in the question paper for writing that particular answer would fit maximum 150 words. Therefore, the answers will have to be brief and to the point. Every student must practise enough to adhere to the word limit before they appear in the board exam,” the official said.

The circular that has been sent to the schools before Durga Puja contains a chart specifying the word limit for various types of questions.

The chart states that for a question with four marks, the word limit will be 80. A maximum of 100 words can be used for answering a question carrying five marks. The word limit for a question that carries six marks will be 120 and 150 words have been fixed for questions carrying between seven and eight marks.

In Higher Secondary, students are not asked to write long answers. The questions in most subjects carry a maximum of eight marks.

However, in some subjects such as commerce, one or two questions carry 10 and 15 marks.

According to the circular for a 10-mark question the word limit is 200 and 30 for a 15-mark question.

In case the word limit is not mentioned against any question, examinees will have to complete the answer within the space provided below the question, according to the circular.

However, students will be allowed to use an extra sheet in certain subjects such as language papers and commerce.

Till this year, the Higher Secondary question papers were split into parts. Part-A consisted of long answer-type questions, which students had to write on separate answer scripts.

The part-B contained multiple-choice and very short answer-type questions, which had to be answered in the question paper itself. The examinees had to tie the answer scripts with the Part-B of the question paper.