The Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswamy had announced the cancellation of board exams for Class 10 students and promoted them to Class Eleven. Accordingly, the results for the Class 10 board exams will be declared based on marks secured in quarterly and half-yearly exams besides 20 per cent calculated in the attendance.

Though the School Education Department earlier said that the board exams for private candidates will be announced later, till now new schedule has not been released. The statistics from the Directorate of Examination show that 10,742 private candidates had registered to appear for the exam this year. In addition, another 23,581 candidates had registered to appear for arrear papers.

A senior official from the School Education Department told DT Next on Saturday that due to the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, the government is unable to announce the exam schedule for private candidates. “Once normalcy is restored, the exams will be conducted accordingly”, he added.

“Moreover, the government cannot declare all pass for private candidates since marks cannot be calculated from previous exams”, he said.

However, private candidates, who had registered to appear for the Class 10 board exam this year, pointed out that most of the non-school candidates will write the exam for getting promotions at their employment, especially in government organisations.

“My promotion is at stake. I cannot understand as to why the government is delaying the announcement of the exam schedule”, K Gnanasekaran, a private candidate, who had registered for the Class ten board exam this year, said.

According to him, more than 90% of private candidates were employed and unlike school children, it will not be a big problem for the government to conduct exams safely.