While the onset of coronavirus has forced the state governments to ask all the schools to be shut down, Kalyan-based Arya Gurukul School continued with the scheduled examinations but without risking the safety of its students. The school conducted the final exams online from classes V to VIII. An online portal was created for the papers to be examined – science, social studies, Sanskrit and math.
Bharat Malik, Director, Arya Global Group explained, “Prior to the exam, a ‘Parent Consent Form’ was sent to all parents, through Microsoft Forms 21st century tools and it was indeed a great encouragement to see that we received responses and positive feedback from all the parents of 546 students of these four grades.”
Krishank Malik, Trustee and IT Director of Arya Global Group said, “Our exams were going on before the announcement of the closing down of all schools due to COVID 19. Only one exam was remaining from the four grades: grade 5 – science, grade 6 – Sanskrit, grade 7 – SST and Grade 8 – math. So, we sent a circular consisting of an online exam consent form to the parents. The papers were converted into digital question papers using Microsoft forms. For Sanskrit, the font was an issue, so we asked the students to write down the answers in a paper. Then they can either scan or email it to us or the parent can come to school and hand us the answer sheet within 2 days.”
He further added, “The links were available for 24 hours and the children could sit for the exam anytime. Each student had a unique online exam ID and hence we could monitor when a student begins and ends the exam.”
The whole process was created within a span of two days with their technical support team, the Microsoft Technical team, and tech avant garde team working non-stop, preparing the technical platforms for the exam, and sending out the forms to parents, collating the data, answering parent’s queries and finally releasing the link to the exams before conducting realtime monitoring of the exams.
Vrushali Kaneri whose son is giving the class 8 social studies exam online, “We got to know about the exam on Sunday evening in which it was mentioned that the child will go to school and give the exam. We as parents were worried because it’s not safe for our children to step outside. But later the school informed us that the students will have to give the exams online and it was a relief for us. Thanks to the management and teachers of Arya Gurukul because at such short notice it took such an effort to ensure that the online exams are conducted successfully. This is also a learning experience as the students are getting acquainted with the new technology. My child very much enjoyed the whole process.”
Rupali Dhavale’s son who appeared for the class 7 science exam too was happy with the way the online exams were conducted and explained that “the school had shared an online link, clicking which a questionnaire will appear where the children will have to write their responses.”
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