Tamil Nadu School Exams Cancelled For Class 9 to11; Students To Be Promoted Without Exams

Tamil Nadu School Exams Cancelled: On Thursday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami declared that the state government will not conduct exams for students of classes 9, 10, and 11, and will promote them to the next class without any examinations.

The decision was taken after medical experts suggested that the current situation was not conducive to conduct the SSLC and plus one exam.

Students of std 9th, 10th and 11th will be promoted to the next class without taking exams, in the light of #COVID19 pandemic: Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, in the state legislative assembly https://t.co/lZ97b5QyPD

— ANI (@ANI) February 25, 2021

As per reports, students will be assessed based on their internal assessment marks, and the marks for the pending examination will be divided into two parameters. Around 80% marks will be evaluated based on the students' performance in quarterly and half-yearly examinations whereas 20% will be based on attendance. The TN Education Department is yet to issue such notice to the schools across the state in this matter.

However, the state will conduct examinations for class 12 between May 3 and May 21 for which the timetable has been released. The state board exams are usually held in March but are postponed to April this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tamil Nadu schools, which shut due to the pandemic in March 2020, reopened for classes 10 and 12 on 19 January 2021. As per the standard operating procedure laid by the government, a maximum of 25 students were allowed to be seated in a classroom. Additionally, the health department also directed to give Vitamin and Zinc tablets to each student to boost their immunity.

On January 8 2021, it was reported that close to 25 students at Lal Bahadur Shastri Kisan High School in Munger district, Bihar, tested positive for COVID-19. The discovery was made after 75 students underwent random testing at the school. Just one school has reported such incident out of 8000 schools recently opened in the state, as per Amit Kumar, the deputy director of the Bihar education department. You can read about it here.

In Odisha too, 31 teachers and students within the Gajapati district tested positive for coronavirus following the reopening of schools for classes 10 and 12.