Telangana and Tamil Nadu governments have cancelled Class 10 board exams. While Tamil Nadu has decided to promote its 9 lakh class 10 students on the basis of their scores in half yearly and quarterly exams and attendance, the Telangana government has decided to promote students to the next higher class based on their grades in internal assessments. Tamil Nadu has also cancelled the pending class 11 exams and postponed the class 12 exams for absentees. The date will be announced soon.

During an official meeting convened by the chief minister of Telangana K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday, Rao decided to cancel the rescheduled Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams. About 5.35 lakh class 10 students in Telangana were supposed to write the SSC exam in six subjects from March 19 to April 6. But, only three papers of two subjects were completed and the remaining were postponed due to the lockdown in view of the Covid-19 spread. The government had filed a vacate stay petition on exams in the High Court in the second week of May and sought permission to resume them. The exams were rescheduled from June 8 to July 5 with advanced supplementary exams for students who could not appear for the exams.  

Allowing to resume exams after the first week of June, the Court had directed the Telangana government to review the Covid-19 situation on June 3 to see if exams could be held from June 8. It had also directed to keep the exams on hold if the situation deteriorates. The exams were supposed to resume on Monday, but the High Court stopped them in GHMC limits of Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Rangareddy while allowing them in rest of the state. However, as conducting exams in different phases could lead to a lot of confusion, the state government decided to do away with the exams altogether.

TN follows Telangana’s suit

Earlier, the opposition parties and Madras High Court had criticised the Tamil Nadu government for holding exams by putting the lives of students at risk. The Court had given time till June 11 for the TN government to decide on holding the exams. After conducting a review meeting on Tuesday, the TN chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami said as health experts have stated that the Covid-19 infection rate will not drop and there’s been a rise in the number of coronavirus positive cases, it’s been decided to cancel class 10 and class 11 exams. “For class 10 students, they will get 80 percent weightage for half yearly and quarterly and 20 percent for attendance,” he said. The students were supposed to appear for their class 10 board exams from June 15 at 12,690 centres.

Source: The Hindu and Times of India

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