Karnataka on Monday announced the dates for the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) or Class 10 board examination 2021 that has been scheduled to be conducted from July 19-22 at various centres spread across the state.

After a meeting with bureaucrats’ concerned and academic experts here, Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar said that as decided earlier the Class 10 board examinations will be conducted only for two days.

“On July 19, the examination will be held for the core subjects Maths, Science and Social Science, while on July 22, the examination will be held for languages. The hall tickets will be released on June 30,” he said.

He added that the Class 10 examination is scheduled to be held from 10.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.

Kumar said that students who have migrated with their parents due to the pandemic will be allowed to write their examination from a centre closer to their location. “The government already has data on students who migrated and the Deputy Director of Public Instruction in respective areas have been alerted who’ll further ensure that these students appear for the examination,” Kumar said.

He added that last year, the examinations were held over six days. “However, keeping in mind the current situation, this year, the exams will be held for two days. This year 8.76 lakh students will appear for SSLC examinations, whereas, last year, 8.46 lakh students appeared for the examinations. For this year’s preparations, 73,066 examination rooms have been set up for the exam as compared to last year of 48,000,” the minister said.

Kumar added those in-charge of the examination centres will have to abide by the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) released by the state last week.

According to the SOPs released by Karnataka, sanitising the examination halls, furniture and toilets daily by spraying disinfectant solution before and after the exam have been mandated.

“Only 12 students per classroom of the examination centre and one student at each desk to maintain physical distancing. While in the rural areas, arrangements will be made to ensure that no students need to go to any other place where travelling is required to appear for these examinations,” the SOP stated.

The SOP added that additionally, every examination centre will have a small health centre, where paramedical staff or ASHA workers will be stationed to monitor the health of the students. Subsequently, he added that Scouts and Guides in the state have offered to assist in ensuring Covid-19 appropriate behaviour is followed by students in the centres.

Apart from this, the minister exhorted speeding up of anti-Covid vaccination drive to inoculate teachers, staff and officials involved in conducting the examination.

He also said that students would be provided masks at the entrance of the health counters in the examination halls besides ambulances will be kept reserved in each taluk for those involved in the SSLC examination.

“There would also be a Covid care centre for those Covid- positive students to write the examination. If anyone in the family is infected and the candidate is in isolation and is found to be healthy, he or she would be allowed to write the test at the nearby Covid Care Centre after testing the student,” the SOP explained.