Final results of Class XII students from State Board schools in Tamil Nadu were announced on Monday, and all 8.16 lakh of them have passed. The board exams, scheduled to be held earlier this year, were cancelled owing to the pandemic.
Releasing the results, Minister for School Education Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi said a decision to cancel the exams was made following several stakeholder recommendations, and a subsequent report prepared by the expert committee. The committee had come up with multiple methods to calculate marks and one was chosen.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had announced that 50% weightage would be given to Class X public exam marks (average of the top three subjects); 20% to Class XI public exam theory marks; and 30% to Class XII practicals/internal marks for both practical and non-practical subject groups.
“As many as 33,557 students who had arrears in Class XI have also been declared pass. We took into consideration the fact that they might not have been able to attempt the exams properly due to the COVID-19 situation in March 2020,” the Minister said.
For those not happy with the results and around 39,000 private candidates, the Minister said exams would be held either in September or October, depending on the COVID-19 situation then. A total of 1,656 students who did not attempt any paper in Class XI will also be given a chance to take them up whenever the exams can be held.
“The government wanted students to have the results as soon as possible, and this was facilitated at the earliest. With marks of both Class X and Class XI exams already on the EMIS portal, we were able to process the results quickly,” Mr. Poyyamozhi said.
The Class X board exams were also cancelled this year, owing to the pandemic, and an announcement on marksheets for the same is expected shortly, he said.
Of the 8.16 lakh students, 7.64 lakh were from the general streams and 51,880 from vocational.
For a large part of the academic year, schools remained shut. They reopened for two months in January for senior classes alone, but soon had to close in April, owing to the rising number of COVID-19 cases, when students were just about able to finish their revision exams and board exam practicals.
