The Supreme Court on Friday gave permission to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to issue notification for cancellation of remaining board exams of Classes 10 and 12 scheduled to be held in July and approved the assessment scheme submitted by the board to award marks to students for the cancelled papers.The results of the board-exams will be announced by mid-July.
According to the assessment scheme submitted by the CBSE, students who have taken exams for all the subjects, will be evaluated according to the marks obtained in the exam. If the students have appeared for three or more subjects, the average of best three subjects will be awarded to those subjects in which they haven’t taken the exams.
Students who haven’t taken the test for more than one or two subjects, will be evaluated on their performance in the last three school exams.
In case they are not satisfied with the marks given by the board they can also appear for the board exam at a later date to improve their performance. The Centre on Thursday said examinations will be conducted when the atmosphere is “conducive”.
CBSE was also to hold the pending exams for Class 12 students belonging to the North-East Delhi which was affected by the riots in February this year. Now their results will be evaluated on the basis of exams conducted and internal assessment for the rest of the subjects.
The top court bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna was hearing a plea filed by parents of wards appearing for board exams who sought for cancellation of the remaining papers in view of increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the CBSE, said that the assessment scheme will consider marks achieved by students in last three papers of board exams and that it was a pro-students measure.
The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) board told the court that its assessment scheme will be “slightly different” from that of CBSE. They will put the notification on its website in a week, while they agreed with the decision to cancel the rest of the board exams.
While both the CBSE and ICSE told the top court that the results of the class X and XII board exams can be declared by mid of July.
The pending exams for Class 12 included 12 core subjects, Business Studies, Geography, Hindi (Core), Hindi (Elective), Home Science, Sociology, Computer Science (Old), Computer Science (New), Information Practice (Old), Information Practice (New), Information Technology and Bio-Technology.
The remaining CBSE papers which were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic were to be held from July 1 to 15, however, with the rapid rise in coronavirus cases across the country still continuing, the education board and government had to reconsider their decision.