Nagpur: State education board has decided to bear sanitization costs of centres for the upcoming supplementary exams, thus ending the friction with host schools and junior colleges. Various school associations had threatened to boycott the exams beginning next week unless state paid for the sanitization costs.
Board officials told TOI that they will be providing sanitization equipments to all exam centres. Ravikant Deshpande, divisional secretary of the board said, “The decision has been made and conveyed to all centre superintendents. They will be provided with all materials needed to sanitize premises. Also we are going to provide thermal temperature checking device as part of the SOPs.”
Deshpande held a meeting with centre superintendents a few days ago and briefed them about the safety protocols to be followed. “Every CS has been made aware of the unique situation we find ourselves in. We cannot take any chance with regards to health of students. Hence wearing masks will be compulsory as shall be sanitization of premises on a daily basis,” said Deshpande.
While sanitization costs can be high, board officials were fortunate as the supplementary exam has very few students. Deshpande said, “On an average 10%-15% students appear for supplementary exams as compared to the summer one. So this means fewer centres as well.”
Under his jurisdiction of six districts (Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gadchiroli, Chandrapur and Gondia) only 50-odd exams centre are there. “For Std X we have 24 exam centres whereas for XII we have 31. In fact we have already started sending the sanitization materials to most centres,” said Deshpande.