A few days ago when we spoke to her, Parvathi Ravi was quite distressed. The Principal of WVS Special School, Coimbatore, 18 of her students was to write the Tamil Nadu SSLC Examination privately, which began on Monday. She was quite hopeful about the Supreme Court considering a petition that sought the exam's cancellation for disabled students. However, the petition wasn't listed until Saturday, which allowed the TN government to go ahead with the exam.
Parvathi appeared quite relieved today. All of the three students who had registered to write the Tamil exam on Monday appeared for it, in their school. All of the 18 students will be appearing for their science exam on Wednesday. "This was a last-minute decision, thanks to the Department of Welfare of Differently Abled Persons Commissioner Johny Tom Varghese," says Parvathi. "He had asked all the principals who were willing to convert their schools into exam centres to email him. I was quick to respond," she says. Previously, while speaking to EdexLive, Varghese said that examination for all the disabled students will be held in special schools or accessible centres.
The state had also mandated all the students to get a COVID test done before the examination. A lot of parents had raised concerns over, taking their disabled children to crowded government hospitals. However, Parvathi says that the health officials had come to the school to conduct rapid COVID tests. "Thankfully, all of them were negative," she says. At the same time, she does not know how well her students wrote the exam. "They did not get any training for the past six months. So I had asked them to aim to score 40 marks and pass the exam," she says.
While a few parents refrained from taking their students to the exam centres citing a surge in COVID cases, a lot of them whose students wrote the exam appeared convinced. "All the arrangements were properly made at the exam centre. It's just that parents were not allowed in the building. We had to wait outside until the exam got over," says Leela, a parent.
