There was no other option available to the authorities than to cancel or postpone most of the school examinations which were to be held, after the second wave of the pandemic started sweeping across the country. The CBSE has cancelled the Class X board examinations and postponed the Class XII exams. The ICSE has announced that the board exams for Classes X and XII, scheduled to begin on May 4, would be deferred, and a final decision would be taken later after reviewing the situation. State boards have taken different decisions on the basis of the situation prevailing in the states. Some states have announced the scrapping of exams and others are yet to make the announcement. Punjab has declared that all students of Class X would be promoted. But Kerala decided to conduct the examinations, which are taking place now. Tamil Nadu has scheduled to hold the exams in May.
Examinations over several days for lakhs of students across the country may become super spreader events, and many students are likely to get infected even before they complete the exams. So, the cancellations and postponements have brought relief to students and parents but the decisions have also raised many questions. The situation is especially difficult for students of Class XII, which is a gateway exam whose outcome decides the future academic course of students. The admissions that they secure for colleges or courses on the basis of their Class XII results or the tests to be held after the exam are crucial for their lives. There is the need for another plan which will do justice to the students if the present plan does not work. Different possibilities should be explored and solutions suitable for different situations should be formulated and kept ready.
In the absence of offline examinations, students can only be awarded marks on the basis of internal assessment. Even this is not as easy as it was in the last academic year when students had attended classes for the most part of the year. This entire year studies were online for students and a large number of them, perhaps the majority of them, had poor access to online classes for various reasons. Students from less privileged backgrounds would certainly be adversely affected. The challenge is to find a solution which would do justice to them too. The crisis also brings into focus the shortcomings of the education system and the need for better methods of evaluation of students. But the present methods of evaluation are mixed up with the present system of education and so the system itself needs drastic changes. The New Education Policy (NEP) has ideas on this which need to be pursued with vigour.
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