Bokaro: CBSE schools in the town are now concerned about completing the course for Term-2, which accounts for 50% of the syllabus, as they only have two and half months to complete it. Specially at this time when new variant Omicron has raised concern.
In the current academic year, CBSE has changed the way board exams are conducted. Based on half of the syllabus, term-1 board exams were conducted in November-December. It is possible that Term-2 will be held in March, and the marks of both exams will be used to tabulate the final marksheet.
Principal of Guru Gobind Singh Public School (GGPS), Soumen Chakraborty said, “Yes, it’s difficult for the students and teachers. In particular, for students who are below average. Few teachers said, “In a normal year, Std X and XII syllabus studies are usually completed in December or mid-January. This year, however, not all students joined in offline mode, which led to a lot of problems when it came to conducting classes.”
Principal of Pentecostal Assembly School, Karuna Prasad said “For Grade 12 – we expect to be completed by mid-January 2022. If there are no further delays, we should have finished full revisions by end of February. But it will be a bit tight”. She also said, “We hope for a bit more normalcy – if school can continue for 6 hours instead of the existing 4 hours, which unfortunately may not be possible due to the upcoming and new variant. Additionally, CBSE should consider moving T2 up to Mid-March or Early April, which would give students and schools more time to prepare for the exams”.
For CBSE schools, another concern is the big difference between term-l and term-2 board exams. A teacher said, “Term-1 was in MCQ format, while term-2 will be in a traditional subjective format”. Principal of Sree Ayyappa Public School, P Shailaja Jayakumar said “Not exactly, Term II exams will be conducted in March-April 2022, as per CBSE notification in the month of July. This gives us a good three months time to complete the syllabus. It requires schools to innovatively deliver the curriculum to students, such that the learning is an interesting experience. The anxiety is about the third variant and the challenge is to ensure students make the best of the hybrid mode of teaching”.
