Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday wrote to Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal expressing his concern over the plan to conduct the remaining Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examinations of Class 10 and Class 12 in July.
He said that Class 12 exams are a high-stake exam for children and subjecting them to take this exam in such an uncertain and anxiety prone situation would not be fair to them. He added that with the rising number of cases, it would be extremely difficult to conduct the exam.
Mr. Sisodia had earlier, in a conference with the State Education Ministers, suggested that the results be declared on the basis of pre-board or internal exams instead of conducting the remaining exams.
Added distress
“Number of COVID-19 cases is likely to rise to 5.5 lakh by July 31. In such a situation, if a candidate or someone in the family tests positive, he/she will have to skip the exam causing further distress. Further, if a candidate was living in a containment zone, they would not be able to take the examination,” Mr. Sisodia said.
He also added that at present, 251 government school buildings are being used as dry ration distribution centres, 33 schools are serving as hunger relief centres, 39 as shelter home, 10 as transit migrant camp and 10 as quarantine centres and would not be in a position to conduct exam from July 1.
Auditoriums in nearly 242 schools, he said are going to be used by the Delhi government to set up additional beds for COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalisation and therefore, holding exams in the same building where there would be hundreds of COVID-19 patients would be a serious risk.
“ I once again request you to remove any further uncertainty and declare that the exams in 29 subjects proposed to be conducted in July will not be conducted at all. For the results in these subjects, CBSE may rely upon the previous school-based internal assessments which includes project work, periodic tests, term exam, etc,” Mr. Sisodia suggested in his letter.