After board exam shock, now Grade 8 students have to stay back an hour after school for special classes

Even before students of class 5 and 8 could completely come to grips with the fact that they will be tested on the whole year’s syllabus at their first-ever public exam, the State government has made another announcement sending shock waves among students and parents.

The government issued a directive to all government and aided schools on Tuesday to conduct special classes after school hours for students from class 8, who will be writing public exam for the first time.

The circular has asked schools to retain class 8 students for an hour after school timings to conduct a revision of the curriculum ahead of the public exam which will start in March. It said teachers should revise the lessons taught in the first two semesters.

The government has taken this step following opposition from several quarters over the inclusion of the entire year’s syllabus for the exam. Political parties, including the PMK and the CPI (M), have criticised the move and urged the government to conduct the exam based only on third semester syllabus.

The government had released the model public exam paper last week. For the first time, students realised that they would tested on  the entire syllabus as opposed to the third semester portion alone. Students and parents immediately objected to this and urged the government to conduct the public exam based only on third semester syllabus as being followed in the semester exam model.

A senior official from the School Education Department told Express that the government issued the latest circular in response to the mounting criticism against including the whole syllabus for the public exam.

Many parents and students have lost or thrown away the textbooks and notebooks from the previous semesters as they were not aware that the public exam would have questions for the whole syllabus. The government’s announcement in 2019 introducing public exams for students in class 5 and 8 itself received significant backlash from the public.

Many had said that this would put immense stress on students and promote rote learning from an exam point of view. "Since young students do not understand the importance of board exam, parents are getting extremely stressed about the situation," said S Arumainathan of TN Students-Parents Welfare Association.

PK Ilamaran, leader of the Tamil Nadu Government Teachers’ Association, said, “Introducing public exam for such young children will cause tremendous stress to the kids and their families. Making young children stay back for special classes will rob them of their childhood.” Political parties, including the PMK and the CPI (M) have criticised the move and urged the government to conduct the exam based only third semester syllabus.

The directive sent to all government and aided schools to conduct special classes after school hours for students from class 8 who will be writing public has sent shock waves among students and parents. The circular has asked schools to retain students for an hour after school timings for teachers to revise lessons taught in the first two semesters.