The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it will not conduct the class 10th examination while the students of Class 12th will be given an option of appearing in exams after conditions are conducive.
The Class 12 students will get the option to appear in examinations or take assessment on the basis of their performance in past three exams.
A three-judge Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna was hearing a plea seeking the cancellation of this year’s CBSE exams, filed by the parents of students scheduled to appear for their Class XII Board exams in July.
At the outset of today’s hearing, counsel for the petitioner, Advocate Rishi Malhotra, stated that Maharashtra, Delhi and Odisha have indicated their ability to conduct CBSE exams this year.
However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made it clear that the affidavit filed by CBSE today states that the Class X and XII Board exams scheduled for July 1 stand cancelled.
Mehta further elaborated that CBSE has a scheme by which marks scored in the past three exams will be taken into account. He also stated that Class XII exams would be conducted “as soon as situation is conducive.” Further,
“Marks for students who opt for Class XII exams will have that marks as final.”
Those who opt out of the exams that might be held in the future, will be assessed according to the exams they took in the past.
It was also made clear that the Class X board exams were cancelled, and that there would be no optional exams for Class X students.
The Bench, however, asked the CBSE to clarify its stance in the reply filed before the Court. Calling for clarity, Justice Khanwilkar said,
“If you see the dates, you will hold exams for Class 12 sometime. So dates for other exams need to be postponed.”
To this, SG Mehta replied, “Admissions now will be only on the basis of the assessment. They can apply on the basis of assessment.”
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Mehta added that the result on the basis of the assessment of both Class X and XII students will be published by July 15.
Malhotra then suggested, “So far as assessment is concerned, in CBSE, all papers have practical and theory component. Practicals are over. Theory is left. They can take average of practical and grant total marks.”
However, the Bench refused to issue a direction to CBSE in this regard.
The Bench then directed Mehta to mention the date of announcement of results and a detailed timeline in the notification itself. Mehta replied that the notification would be issued latest by tomorrow.
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Earlier In their plea, the parents said that conducting examinations across over 15,000 centres at this stage would unnecessarily expose children to the risk of contracting Covid-19.
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It also asked the board to allot marks to students for the remaining papers on the basis of their internal assessment and performance in practicals and examinations they took in March.
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With the remaining CBSE and ICSE Board examinations for classes X and XII, scheduled to be held in July, getting cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all eyes have now turned to competitive exams like JEE (Main) 2020 and NEET 2020 which are held for admissions into undergraduate engineering and medical courses.
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The Joint Entrance Examination (Main) for engineering courses is scheduled to be held from July 18-23 this year. They were earlier scheduled for April but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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