Apr. 27: With a surge in COVID-19 cases in recent days, and the late evening decision of the Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokhrel-led COVID-19 Crisis Management Centre Operation (CCMCOps) to halt all the ongoing and pre-scheduled school and college examinations on Sunday, students and their guardians have again been confused regarding the exams.

CCMCOps took the decision Sunday evening considering the growing cases of virus across the country. However, the CCMCOps delayed to make public the official decision, which created confusion, specailly among the university students who were to appear in the exams on Monday.

As in last year, the schools this year have also been closed at the end of the academic session raising the same question—how and when the exams will be held? Normally, the school examinations will be over by mid-April, but this year the academic session was extended till mid-May citing that classes in schools began only in August because of COVID-19 fear and a lengthy lockdown.

Again the government has announced restrictions to contain the spread of the virus.

Though the government has asked to close schools only for a month, the reopening of the schools has become uncertain with rising virus cases and newer government restrictions.

Heramba Raj Kandel, headmaster of Vishwo Niketan Secondary School, Tripureshwor said it would be better to upgrade students to next grade as many schools did the previous year.Kandel said schools could upgrade students to next class on the basis of their performance in the terminal examinations. He said it was not required to publish the results of students amid this uncertainty because schools have already completed the courses.

However, Dr. Biddhya Nath Koirala, an educationist, has a different view. Automatic upgrade of children will only result in degradation of education quality, he said, adding that examinations could be conducted from the same medium which they had adopted to teach students.

Schools can conduct exams virtually when it is impossible to take them in physical presence, he said.

Many private schools of the cities have already set their own plans to conduct their examinations. However, with the latest government decision, now they cannot conduct exams in physical presence.

D.K. Dhungana, founder of Radiant Readers Academy and co-chairperson of Private and Boarding School Organisation of Nepal, said though PABSON had not taken any formal decision regarding the examinations, they had an informal plan to complete the examinations virtually by mid-May.

Dhungana informed that his school had also published a schedule to conduct the examinations virtually from next week.

source: risingnepal, 27 April 2021