The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) recently announced that it will conduct practical exams for classes 10 and 12 from 2 March.
The board will be appointing external examiners to conduct the class 12 practicals, while the ones for class 10 students will be supervised by the schools themselves.
The marks of practical/internal assessment will be uploaded simultaneously from 2 March till the last date of respective class.
Schools have been instructed to conduct these exams in accordance with all Covid-19 safety protocols.
“To avoid crowding and social distancing, the schools may consider splitting the group/batch of students in sub groups of 10 students each. First group of 10 students may attend the lab work while the other is doing pen and paper work and vice-versa," read the recently released CBSE guidelines.
Term 2 theory exams for classes 10, 12
Further, the board is planning to conduct theory from 26 April in offline mode.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea seeking cancellation of physical exams for classes 10 and 12 to be conducted by all state boards, CBSE, ICSE and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), saying such petitions give false hope to students and only create more confusion.
A bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar slammed the petitioner's counsel for filing such a plea saying authorities are more aware of the ground realities and are capable of taking a decision with which the court should not interfere.
"Such petitions give false hopes to students. Entertaining such petitions is only increasing confusion in the system. What kind of petitions are being filed?" asked the apex court.
The bench said its last year's order on postponing of examination cannot become a norm to pass the same order for this academic year also.
"This petition is ill-advised and premature. Authorities are yet to take a decision for exam rules and dates in respective boards. If decisions are not in accordance with rules and Act it will be open to aggrieved persons to challenge in that regard," said the bench while dismissing the plea.
The apex court said it was refraining from imposing a cost, but added that if the petitioner again filed such petition exemplary costs would be imposed.
The CBSE Term 1 class 10 board exams started from 30 November and went on till 11 December while the class 12 board exams continued till 22 December.
For the first time, the board is conducting the board exam in two phases because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The term 1 examination were held objectively, that is the question paper had Multiple Choice Question (MCQ).
