Big Monday surprise: CBSE catches students, schools off guard once again

Nagpur: The CBSE Std X results announced on Monday yet again came as a shock for schools, even though it was anticipated that it will happen in the first week of May.
The shock aspect was that the CBSE declared the results with just 1.5 hours of ‘advance warning’ rather than 24 hours. School principals told TOI that this move by the CBSE seems completely illogical and does not serve any purpose.
A principal said, “On May 2, they shocked everyone with Std XII results and that’s why we knew that Std X results are just round the corner. But yes, we thought that this time, they will give us some advance warning. Probably a day.”
But that was not to be as the CBSE again decided to catch everyone off guard and go through with result declaration.
Many schools in city were already reeling under the workload of Sunday’s big ticket NEET, and were hoping that maybe a day’s respite was in order. These results, however, will go down in CBSE’s history as the fastest ever to be declared.
With the first week of May not even over yet, both results of CBSE have been declared. Last year, CBSE Std XII results came on May 26, while Std X came on May 29.
The CBSE has been the biggest ‘culprit’ as compared to other boards when it comes to declaring results without intimation. A couple of years ago, the board declared results around 9pm and that too without any prior intimation. That left schools completely bewildered as some rushed back to office to compile results while some had their staff working from home to take out the results.
Only last year the CBSE showed some semblance of ‘normalcy’ when it announced at least a day before about their plans to declare results.
Usually, the ICSE board is the only one that follows a very professional approach in declaration of results. With advance information of at least a week, ICSE keeps its comparatively smaller flock well informed of the developments. The CBSE is many times bigger than ICSE in terms of student strength, but principals say that cannot be an excuse for these ‘shock treatments’.
“See, it gets very embarrassing for all of us because parents keep calling, teachers keep asking us and the cycle is never ending. Rumours about dates float so much on social media that half of our energy goes in just denying them. If CBSE can only declare a fixed date every year, it will make our life much easier,” said the principal.