Cancel Board Exams: Students reach the Supreme Court with the plea, hearing tomorrow

Cancel Board Exams: As seen earlier due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the final examinations of Class 10 and 12th of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE), National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and of different boards of the state for the year 2021 was cancelled.

Now the students of the present batch (studying in class 10 and 12th) reached the Supreme Court to urge for the cancellation of the 10th and 12th State Boards, CBSE, ICSE, and NIOS for the current year as well. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the plea, as Chief Justice NV Ramana accepted the request and said that the matter will now be heard before the bench, led by Justice AM Khanwilkar.

Also read: Gauhati University Exam Routine: UG 5th sem students to have exams from March 30

Cancel board exams: Why such noise?

As the examinations were fully in online mode for the students of both class 10 and class 12 last year, there were many alternative criteria laid in front of different boards regarding the evaluation of the results of the final examination. But this time, the physical classes had been started by the end of November 2021. Still, many students feel that the online examinations are the best options, as the mode of education has been fluctuating between online and offline throughout the time due to the surge in Corona cases. So cancelling board exams would be more ideal for them.

Anubha Shrivastava Sahai, an Advocate and Child Rights Activist, along with the Student Union of Odisha-NYCS as the second petitioner had filed a petition over the Supreme court where more than thousands of students came together to sign online (Google) forms regarding their protest, and the petitioners randomly selected two students from each state from those records, talked to them over the phone and then added their names to the plea.

Students gaining mental pressure!

In various media channels, Shrivastava has said the Court to instruct the boards to conduct internal assessments for students as many of them have taken mental, physical, and economical stress throughout the pandemic period. The infrequent decisions have also made them skeptical of more stress which may affect their results.

The petitioners and students are hoping that if the physical board exams cannot be changed into internal assessment completely, the boards should at least change it to objective questions, rather than having the complete subjective questions-based exams. For the past term and a few other exams, the question papers have majorly been MCQ/ objective-based.

So, students have lost the practice of writing, Shrivastava Sahai claimed. Now that the term I board exams (and some of the other exams too) are being conducted in offline mode with subjective questions, the petitioners and students feel it is unfair and will add to their mental pressure. CBSE had recently announced the date sheet of the second board exams for Class 12. The results of the first final exams are yet to be declared.

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