Bengal board rules out change in board exam schedule amid surge in Covid cases
1 min read 06 Jan 2022, 07:08 PM ISTThe state board examinations are set to be held from 2 April to 20 April and Class 10 exams between 7 March and 16 March.
PremiumKOLKATA : The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education authorities on Thursday informed that they had no plans of cancelling or postponing the upcoming offline board examinations.
The state board examinations are set to be held from 2 April to 20 April and Class 10 exams between 7 March and 16 March.
The authorities cited that fact that dates were set at least three to four months away from now and the Covid situation could be better by then.
The president of Council of Higher Secondary Education, Chiranjib Bhattacharya, said, "Conducting online exams is not feasible. A large number of students in the rural areas won't be able to afford smartphones with high-speed Internet. We would like to hold the exams offline. There is no plan to change the schedule as of now."
He also said that the council was hopeful students this year "wouldn’t have to struggle like those that did over the past two years".
"We cannot predict the turn of events. We can only hope things will get better," Bhattacharya stated.
Kalyanmoy Ganguly, the president of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, said it would not be wise to speculate about the mode of examination this early.
"We won’t be thinking of any alternative evaluation criteria for the time being. Arrangements for holding offline tests are in full swing," he said.
The West Bengal Board's secondary exams were held offline in 2020. In 2021, however, exams were called off amid the raging second wave of the pandemic.
Authorities had to come up with an alternative method for evaluating the students. Higher Secondary exams, which had commenced in 2020 before the pandemic struck, were scrapped midway owing to the pandemic, forcing the board to devise a formula to award marks to the students.
In 2021, no examination was held, with authorities drawing up a different evaluation criteria for the students.
