Board exams to happen for sure, schedule to be announced soon, says CBSE Secretary

The CBSE exams for class 10 and 12 will happen for sure and a schedule is likely to be announced soon, board secretary Anurag Tripathi said on Friday. The comments by Tripathi come amid demands from various quarters for cancellation or postponement of board exams in view of rising COVID-19 cases. "The board exams will happen for sure and a schedule will be announced very soon. The CBSE is making plans and will soon reveal how it will do test assessments," he said during a webinar on "New Education Policy (NEP): Brighter future of school education" organised by ASSOCHAM.

He, however, did not comment upon whether the exams will be conducted in the same format and will be held in February-March as per schedule or will be postponed. "During March-April we were flummoxed as to how to move forward, but our schools and teachers rose to the occasion and transformed, trained themselves in using new technology for teaching purposes and within few months conducting online classes using different apps became normal," Tripathi said.

Schools across the country were closed in March in order to contain spread of novel coronavirus and opened partially in some states from October 15. However, few states decided to keep them closed or closed again in view of spike in COVID-19 cases. The board exams which had to be postponed mid-way were later cancelled and the results were announced on basis of an alternative assessment scheme. There have been demands for postponement of board exams to May in view of continued closure of schools and teaching-learning activities being completely online.

Noting that a common aim of all education policies including the new National Education Policy (NEP) has been to shift students from rote learning to experiential learning, Tripathi said, "the entire NEP 2020's thrust and main aim is to make a shift to skill and competency based education". "We need to move students away from knowledge based education to competency and skill based learning. To implement skill-based, competency based education there is a need to transform and follow entire pedagogy based teaching-learning process be it classroom teaching, face-to-face teaching or online teaching.

"The pedagogy based teaching-learning process is more about making students more curious, innovative, creative and providing them experiential learning and this can be achieved only when schools, teachers and principals change the teaching pedagogy," he said.