For a majority of 12th standard students and teachers in the State, the announcement of the class 12 results on Monday meant an end to a year which was fraught with uncertainty owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Students of standard 12 spent a large part of the 2020-21 academic year at home owing to the closure of schools and only had around two months in school. The Board exams too, were clouded in uncertainty after the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu after February.
“The results overall are better than expected for a majority of the students. Students whose marks were low in the class 11 public exams are the ones who are a bit disappointed,” said Patric Raymond, General Secretary, Tamil Nadu Graduate Teachers Federation.
B. Purushothaman, principal, Everwin Group of Schools said that while he would usually see top performers unhappy with some aspect of their results, most of the students this year were relieved with their marks. “The students have been quite anxious with regard to how they would be assessed and the early declaration of the results has been welcomed. As it stands, we doubt if there will be many students opting to take up the board exams to be conducted later this year for students who are unhappy with their results,” he said.
While the School Education Department has said that students unhappy with the results can opt to write the exams later this year, they have also said that the marks scored in that written exam will be considered final. “If the Board had said the best of the two results would be chosen, we probably would have had more students opting to take this up,” Mr Pusuhothaman added.
For the coming academic year, the CBSE has said that Class 12 will have two terms and a board exam at the end of each term -- in two different formats.
“A semester system is something that should be considered for State board schools as well. There is a lot riding on the final board exam and this semester system would take the burden off students at a time of uncertainty,” said K.R. Nandhakumar, State General Secretary, Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary,Matriculation, Higher Secondary and CBSE schools Association. He welcomed the early announcement of the results by the School Education Department.
The Tamil Nadu Teachers Association, in a statement, welcomed the evaluation method followed to calculate the results and thanked the State government for the timely announcement of results.
Students can download their provisional mark sheets from July 22 from www.dge.tn.gov.in and www.dge.tn.nic.in , the Directorate of Government Examinations has said.
