Vaccinate students before boards, says Delhi minister Manish Sisodia

NEW DELHI: Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said on Sunday that he was not in favour of conducting the Class XII board examinations unless the students appearing for it were vaccinated.
The Centre should approach Pfizer as it has already developed vaccines for 12+ children and prioritise vaccinating 1.4 crore students who are to appear in the exams, the education minister suggested at a national-level meeting hosted by the Union education ministry on conducting the board exams.
If vaccines are provided, Delhi government will vaccinate all such students in the city in two days. “Only after procuring vaccines and vaccinating all students, should the central government think about conducting any kind of examination,” he said.
Exams should be cancelled if that cannot happen, Sisodia suggested. Reiterating his “no-exam policy”, the minister said students could be awarded grades on the basis of their unit tests, pre-board and practical exams, similar to the Class X promotional policy, and should get the choice to retake exams for improvement.
While “the consensus of the entire education community is that the conducting exams is important”, it is not needed that students and teachers are put at risk, he said. “As a guardian of the state, Delhi government is taking a stand to keep the safety and security of our students as the first and most important priority. Until we can vaccinate our students, we should not even think of conducting the 12th board exams,” he said at a press conference.
The Centre needs to take a decision on the exams, “considering it has caused enough tension among our student and teacher communities”, the education minister pointed out. “Conducting board exams in these unprecedented times would be a big mistake on behalf of the central government. It would render our children and teachers even more vulnerable.”
Conducting a board exam when the world is preparing for the third Covid-19 wave and India is recording 2.5 lakh daily cases “is irresponsible”, he said. “Our students, parents and teachers will not be in a good mental state to sit for any kind of exams.”
Sisodia pointed out that 95% of the Class XII students were approximately 17.5 years old and the Centre should find out from health experts if vaccines for 18+ age group could be administered to these students.