Now, Maharashtra mulls ‘no exam’, grading on past academic score for HSC students

MUMBAI: In what could come as a relief to 14 lakh class 12 students in the state waiting to appear for their board exam, state education minister Varsha Gaikwad said that a ‘no-exam route’ needs to be examined as it is possible to evaluate them based on their past performance.
Gaikwad told reporters after attending a virtual meet of education ministers and officers of all states with Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Sunday.
While the state had cancelled the class 10 exam, the class 12 exam was put on hold. The Bombay high court had on Thursday questioned the state’s rationale for this.
Admitting that the uncertainty over exams needs to end and a decision in students’ interest must be made, Gaikwad said a call will be taken in a day or two after consulting chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
For class 10 students, the state is considering evaluating them based on their class 8 and 9 marks.
“The court will consider our views on not holding exams for class 10 sympathetically as the decision was taken in unusual conditions due to Covid-19. We will ensure that students do not suffer in the next academic year,” said Gaikwad.
She said that during Sunday’s virtual meeting, it was felt that children are vulnerable to new strains of coronavirus and hence class 12 students too can be evaluated based on a past assessment model.
The minister said that the focus should be on evolving a uniform assessment policy, vaccination of all teachers and students and safe resumption of schools and colleges for the next academic year. She stressed the need for more vaccines for teachers and eligible students.
The general consensus among education officers across states was that students need to be vaccinated if they have to take an offline exam. “The state may have to derive a methodology to evaluate class 12 students just like their class 10 counterparts. Vaccinating these students (they are below 18) is not possible, nor can they be made to wait for the exam,” said a state education board official.
The official said that all states are concerned about the pandemic and its impact on students. Some state officers spoke about waiting till September before taking a decision on the class 12 exam. All states were unanimous in their decision to cancel the class 10 exam.