Modi govt to ensure Class 10 students who didn’t write board exams are not hassled

Three states – Punjab, Telangana and Tamil Nadu — have already cancelled Class 10 exams for their students this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

School students | Representational image | Commons

New Delhi: The Ministry of Human Resource Development is looking at framing guidelines to ensure that students from state boards who did not write Class 10 exams this year do not face any trouble in the future for admissions and other formalities, ThePrint has learnt.   

Three states — Punjab, Telangana and Tamil Nadu — have decided to cancel Class 10 exams for their students this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

While the states are looking to conduct their own assessments, the central government is also looking at formulating guidelines. 

Confirming the development to ThePrint, a senior HRD ministry official said, “We are poring over guidelines to help students who did not write Class 10 state board exams and were passed on the basis of internal assessment. There has to be a mechanism to ensure these students do not face any trouble if they want to get admission either in a CBSE school later or in another state board.” 

The Class 10 marks are crucial for a number of reasons. They are taken into consideration for admission in junior colleges or pre-university courses in some South Indian states. Many students also change from state board to CBSE after Class 10 and the admission is given on the basis of Class 10 scores.

The scores are also crucial as students get to choose their stream – Science, Humanities, Commerce and others — based on them. 

States taking their own call on exams

States, however, are taking their own calls with regard to the Class 10 exams.  

Punjab, which was the first state to announce cancellation of exams, has not decided on its future strategy as yet but has promoted students on the basis of their pre-board marks. 

“We decided to cancel exams because of the Covid-19 pandemic and it was a decision widely appreciated by parents. We declared results based on pre-boards,” Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) Controller of Examination, Janak Raj Mehrok, told ThePrint. 

“Every year, we would give marks to students, since this year there was no final exam, we have given grades to students on the basis of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). Now schools will have to decide the criteria further…on what basis do they want to give admission to students and allot them subjects.” 

Tamil Nadu’s decision to cancel the exams has in a way lessened the burden on the authorities, department officials say. 

Speaking to ThePrint, Tamil Nadu’s Commissioner for School Education, Sigy Thomas Vaidhyan, said that the assessment of students will be done in a fair manner. “Admissions to the 11th standard will be routine and all students will have certificates of passing as per their performance and marks,” she said.

Sources said the state was geared to hold the exams but had to cancel them due to rising number of coronavirus cases, petitions from parents and the court’s advice not to conduct it.

“In order to protect children and their health at a time when the cases are still rising, our government has decided to cancel the SSLC public exams this year,” said an official from the chief minister’s office on the condition of anonymity.