While central boards have decided to cancel their Class 12 examinations, the State government, which is yet to take a final call on the issue, is now mulling the possibility of conducting examination on a single day in July-end or August, if COVID-19 caseload declines by then.
If this tentative proposal goes through, examinations for Class 10 (SSLC) and Class 12 (PUC) will be in the multiple choice questions (MCQ) format. This option was discussed on Wednesday during a meeting with Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, sources who attended it said.
S. Suresh Kumar, Primary and Secondary Education Minister, is said to have mooted this idea as SSLC and II PU students have not had assessments like the central boards.
Highly placed sources said that the Department of Primary and Secondary Education wants permission to conduct such an examination if the positivity rate reduces to less than 5%. Mr Kumar is said to have batted for conducting a MCQ exam and justified the need to conduct the exam as marks/grades obtained in SSLC and II PU are required for admissions into colleges. However, no final decision was taken at the meeting on Wednesday.
According to the department’s plan, no assessment will be conducted for languages and students will have to pick any three core subjects they want to be tested in. “Students will be asked to take the test in two sessions on a single day amidst all precautionary measures,” said a source.
As many as 6.86 lakh candidates have registered for the II PU examination, while 8.76 lakh candidates have registered for the SSLC examination.
Format issue
However, teachers and college principals say that the move to conduct the MCQs may not go down well with the students as they have been preparing for an examination with a different format throughout the year.
“The department should either conduct the examination in the original format or cancel the examination altogether. Conducting an MCQ will just confuse and make the students more anxious,” said a principal of a city based private pre-university college.
Officials of the Department of Pre-University Education and the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board held meetings to discuss the plan of action if the examinations are cancelled and also brainstormed on how the SoPs can be made more stringent if the examinations are held.
