Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao in all likelihood will take a decision to pass all second-year Intermediate students after the Central government decided to do away with CBSE 12th class exams this year.
The Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) is preparing a document with two or three options for the Chief Minister to consider on cancellation as well as awarding the marks based on the first year performance.
The report will be sent to the Chief Minister in a couple of days, a senior BIE official told The Hindu , and cancelling the examinations is on top of the agenda in the present circumstances as the road has already been laid by the Central government. Other proposals include conducting the exams at a later date with reduced time and questions, which has already been conveyed to the Union Education Minister when he sought suggestions from the State governments.
If the exams are to be cancelled, how do they grade the students is a key issue before the government?. The BIE lacks an internal assessment of students unlike the CBSE that can give grades based on year-long performance. Moreover, classes were not held this academic year except for a few days and there was no actual mechanism to assess the students’ academic abilities in Telangana.
However, BIE Secretary Omer Jaleel said that at least they have first-year marks of students to arrive at some kind of grading. “We are still working out some modalities to be placed before the CM. Most probably, it will be sent to him by Wednesday evening,” he said.
About 4.80 lakh students are enrolled in the second year now as all of them were promoted last year. The first year annual exams were held last year and out of the 4,80,555 students who attempted, only 2,88,383 passed in all subjects.
However, the advanced supplementary exams were cancelled by the government due to the pandemic and all those who applied for supplementary were promoted to second year with minimum pass marks in the failed subjects. Government Junior Lecturers Association (GJLA) president, Madhusudhan Reddy hoped that the CM will take a favourable decision as conducting the exams in the near future was loaded with risks to students and lecturers.
