Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced the cancellation of Class 12 and Class 10 board examinations. While addressing the media, the chief minister said that the evaluation process format will be announced within 7 days. Reports had earlier suggested that the expert committee, formed by the government to decide whether the board exams are possible in this pandemic situation, has suggested that it will not be possible to conduct the examinations at this time. The report also contained several proposals on the method of assessment instead of testing.
To recall, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier said that the state government has decided to conduct the Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examination in the second week of August and last week of July respectively where only examinations of the compulsory subjects will be taken, leaving the schools to give marks for the additional subjects based on the internal assessment.
The chief minister had also said that the time tenure of both the exams will be 1.5 hours instead of 3 hours. “There are 15 compulsory subjects and 37 additional subjects in the three streams. We have decided to take exams only of the compulsory subjects which are likely to take 16 days. The numbers of the additional subjects will be given by the respective schools,” she had said.
On Wednesday, the day when the exam schedule for Madhyamik and Higher Secondary was supposed to be announced, the state government postponed the announcement and formed an expert committee to review the entire situation and submit a report within 72 hours on the possibility and mechanism of conducting the exams in this corona situation.
In the committee, top board officials including President of West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination (WBBSE) Kalyanmoy Ganguly, President of West Bengal Council for Higher Secondary Examination (WBCHSE) Mohua Das and Chairperson of West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights Ananya Chakraborty were the members.
Apart from that there will be doctors who are working with Covid patients, child psychologists and members of different NGOs who work mainly with the children and teen-agers.