The State government has decided to conduct the final semester examination for undergraduate and post-graduate students in September. However, all students of intermediate semester will be promoted based on a comprehensive evaluation parameter and no examination will be held for them.
This is applicable for students pursuing undergraduate, post-graduate courses, engineering and diploma students. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Deputy Chief Minister and Higher Education Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan said that the Karnataka Governor, who is also the chancellor of universities has also given his assent for the same.
Dr Ashwath Narayan has said that the State government has taken this decision after consulting educationists, vice-chancellors of universities. He also said that this decision was taken keeping in mind the health concerns of students. The University Grants Commission too had stated that universities have to conduct exam for final semester students by September. The minister stated that this decision would be applicable only for students of the 2019-2020 academic year.
The minister said that the COVID 19 pandemic had disrupted the classes. “Online learning introduced during the lockdown has received good response and the government tried its best to reach the last person in the chain. Amid these, the we were mulling conducting offline classes and examinations too, but owing to increase in the number of cases, we dropped the idea dropped and decided to promote all intermediate semester students,” he said.
For final semester students, individual universities will have to take a call on the examination schedule.
Elaborating on how intermediate semester students would be assessed, Dr Ashwath Narayan said that the students will be assessed based on a comprehensive evaluation scheme with internal assessment marks and previous year’s/semester’s marks considered in a 50:50 ratio. “For students in their first semester/year, the evaluation will be completely based on internal assessment marks”, he said.
He said that if students would like to improve their scores, provision would be made for them to appear for the examination in the coming semester.
“Students who fail to succeed in the comprehensive evaluation process shall face examinations for respective subjects during the next semester. Backlog subjects will be allowed to carry over as well”, he added.
He however said that final semester examination will have to be conducted as many companies who will hire students will consider the assessment of the students.
Online classes to begin from September 1, 2020
The Department of Higher Education department has decided to conduct online classes for the academic year 2020-21. The academic year will begin from September 1 and offline classes will be conducted from October 1.
The Higher Education department has established a helpline to address students grievances : 080-22341394
