Most pvt schools say exams ended before lockdown
nNEWDELHI: A day after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) advised its affiliated schools to promote all Class 9 and Class 11 students to the next grades based on their internal assessments given the Covid-19 pandemic, a majority of private schools in the city on Thursday said they had managed to conduct the exams for these classes before the lockdown began, while those run by the Delhi government said they were yet to take a call on ways to implement the direction.
In Delhi government schools, which are also affiliated to the CBSE, one exam was yet to be conducted for Class 9 and two for Class 11 before the lockdown was announced. However, the situation is different in both private and government schools of northeast Delhi where exams were first suspended in February due to communal riots and in March after Covid-19 hit the Capital.
On Wednesday, the CBSE directed its schools to promote students of these classes based on internal assessments.
The internal assessment generally carries 20% weightage in the final results. It includes unit tests, projects, practicals and extracurricular activities.
A senior official in Delhi government’s education department said that in their schools, only the Urdu language exam was left for Class 9 students and sociology and engineering graphic exams for Class 11. However, government schools in north-east Delhi were yet to take at least four exams for Class 9 and five for Class 11.
“We are considering evaluating students based on internal assessments conducted throughout the year and the annual exams that were held until the lockdown was announced. We will have to plan everything differently for north-east Delhi schools,” the official said.
Gayyur Ahmed, principal of Sarvodya Bal Vidyalaya in Jama Masjid, said the schools are ready with the internal assessment marks of these classes. “We will promote the students as soon as we receive a direction from the government,” he said.
Bharat Arora, general secretary of the action committee of private unaided schools, an umbrella group of around 1,000 private schools in Delhi, said, “Almost all schools affiliated to our organisation had completed their internal exams between
March 10 and 15, like every year. Many had also declared the results before the lockdown was announced. However, some schools were yet to conduct the compartment exams.”
Deeksha Khera, principal of DPS Mathura Road, said, “All our papers were conducted before the lockdown because generally exams are already done by that period. The results were declared online keeping social distancing measures in mind.”
Experts said it was the best alternative the CBSE could have come up with at the moment. Shyama Chona, an education expert, said, “The schools can now test these students immediately after they get promoted to the next grades just to assess their learning levels so they can bring the students at par in another twothree months in the same class.”