Suggestion: Students and MPs Should Take CBSE Board Together – The Litmus Test
Edits | May 25, 2021
First open and run a session of Parliament, with a conglomeration of 600+ MPs and test if it is possible without the spread of Covid 19. This should be the litmus test for opening examination centres, to students. The biggest problem with the examinations system anywhere in the world has witnessed, is conducting exams for students which is the basis of their career and at times an entire lifetime. Hence it is suggested that before we put students in examination centres for either 90 minutes or three hours the same should be tested on the people who will announce this judgement. Hence it is only logical to say that the best place to test it is the Parliament itself. All the lawmakers and parties who may take decisions on CBSE conducting exams will be present there. After a three-hour debate, they can wait for 2 to 3 days for any symptoms. Needless to say, since the government infrastructure and the medical facility at AIIMS is absolutely available to our MPs, this test is both safe and logical. Hence before taking a decision by the Cabinet ministers and the former education ministers, they should hold a session of Parliament,
In order to mimic and lend confidence to the students, invigilators, paternity which will hold exams and many other bodies. Only then an announcement for holding exams like in pre-Covid era be made.
Examination process is married to THE event of holding the exam, physically. It is the pre-exam preparation and post exam evaluation which have to be considered for holding these exams. Invigilators will have to collect examination sheets, evaluate them, put them up on a computer system as marks and only then the process starts. For parents it is the long wait outside each examination centre to find out how their kids have done. For the kids it is reaching the centre early along with their parents at times, comparing notes, speaking to their peers and then sitting for an exam. Within the examination hall, there is water being served, tasks being shared, each desk being different for every next exam, and the placing of bags, picking them up and exiting the halls. All this physical involvement is nothing but close contact of the Covid encounter. This cannot be avoided, for an activity which is called holding an exam.
For CBSE to decide how all this will get mitigated, is much more than the actual exam, which is only putting questions and seeking answers for them. Hence the officials of CBSE, group of ministers, educational departments of the government, and the MPs themselves, should demonstrate that this can be done without any possible spread of Covid, and only then the board exam should be held.
Else this year should be declared as a zero year, with instructions to all Indian higher education bodies, to frame their own policies to take on candidates after their 12th CBSE exams. These institutions of higher learning are more capable of individually deciding a policy, since they are completely dependent upon the fees and the ecosystem around education for their own survival and furtherance. This is an opinion, which has to be considered in these times of war, when the usual established practices are more or less dwindling as the systems in which they operated were not designed for a war like scenario.
CA Divesh Nath
Editor
Woman’s Era
LinkedIn: Divesh Nath
