Bengaluru: Considering the Covid – 19 scenario in the State, Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar on Friday June 4 announced that they would not be conducting 2nd PUC Exams 2021.
After a meeting held on this matter, Suresh Kumar said that the students will be promoted without exams. He said, “The gradation for the students will be made on the basis of 1st PU marks as the first-year final exams were conducted at the district level. This is the reason we decided to grade the students on the said basis as the assessment was fair as their own colleges were not involved in the valuation process.”
“On the basis of this assessment, PU board will soon issue detailed guidelines on various parameters based on which grading will be done. Once the results are announced and if any student is not happy with the results, we have decided to give them an opportunity to test their ability through exams which will be conducted for only such students once the Corona situation comes under total control.
In the current situation, all the students will be promoted with some grade without holding any exams. To come to this consensual decision, we have taken suggestions from various experts and parents and also students through phone-in programmes. I am aware that there will be criticism as everyone cannot be made happy as there is a clear divide among people where one party is saying they need exams and another is saying they do not need exams.
All preparation were done to hold the exams, however we decided to review and to come to this decision, we held three rounds of discussion over the course of four days with various authorities of Education ministry.
Further we have also contacted the education departments and institutions in other states and enquired them about the parameter on which they have decided to asses the students, but sadly no one has given us the firm answers and told us that the parameters will be decided only at a later stage. The current decision we have arrived at is after lot of deliberation through brainstorming keeping in mind the educational future and health of the students.”
Status of SSLC Examinations
“As far as SSLC examinations are concerned, after a high-level meeting with Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa, it has been decided to hold two exams, one for core subjects and the other for languages. Each question in both exams paper will have 120 multiple choice questions with 40 questions from each subject/language. The exams will be comprising MCQs and the questions will be simple and straight. I would like to add here that it is not a mockery of students but a thought-about decision to hold such exams as this will make students decide easily whether to opt for humanities or arts, science, or commerce stream, when they step into pre-university college. After taking the opinion of health experts, we have decided to conduct SSLC exams in the third week of July.”
He went on to say that the date of the examinations will be released 20 days prior. “Again, we have decided to opt for gradation in the results here, the parameters for which will be released by SSLC Board under their guidelines. The results will be announced in the last week of July or the first week of August,” he said.
