The CBSE board exam 2021 will not be canceled and the exam will be most likely held in July like last year amidst Covid protocols, sources confirmed the decision taken at the high-level meeting today between the Centre and the states. The officials during the meeting proposed to conduct E-exams at home centers. The format of the exam is likely to be objective type. A password-protected exam paper will be sent to the centers.
The government had proposed two options i.e. one to hold exams for only limited subjects and two to hold exams for all subjects but reduce the time for each exam from 3 hours to 1.5 hours and change questions to MCQ and short questions type only.
States, however, has demanded a third option. The option of holding CBSE board exams in 19 major subjects was discussed and found support from many states. For other subjects, a different way will be found for evaluation such as internal assessments.
While addressing a press conference post the high-level meeting, Delhi deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, said that the Delhi government is not in favor of conducting Class 12 board exams.
“This is not the right time to conduct exams. We must not fall for following the conventions and traditional practices of conducting exams. We are suggesting that Class 12 students should be evaluated based on performance in internal assessments. If a student is not satisfied with the awarded marks, they should be allowed to appear for exams at a later point,” Sisodia said.
The Union Government has also provided the states to take a call on holding the exams as per the prevailing situations in the respective states. According to government sources, the major entrance exams for undergraduate engineering courses (JEE Main) and medicine (NEET) will be held as well. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will announce the CBSE Class 12 exam dates and the mode of board exams on June 1.
The decision was taken after more than a month of uncertainty regarding the conduct of the Class 12 CBSE board exam 2021. Considering students appearing for these exams are 17-18 years of age, there is a demand for getting these students vaccinated before holding exams.
Students, teachers, and parents had regularly taken to Twitter calling for the cancellation of the Class 12 board exams because of the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the second wave, especially of younger people and even children.
While announcing the virtual meeting on Saturday, May 22, Mr. Pokhriyal also sought inputs from all the stakeholders, students, parents, teachers, and others through Twitter. A section of students is campaigning for the cancellation of exams on social media tagging their posts with #cancelboardexams and #cancelallboardexams.
