Teachers across the State have questioned the feasibility of School Education Minister K.A. Sengottaiyan’s announcement to ensure that transport facilities are made available for all students to be picked up and dropped to their exam centres for their class 10 board examinations.
There are 9.55 lakh students who have registered to take up the SSLC exams this year and around 5 lakh students are from government and government-aided schools. Many of these students will be in need of transport facilities.
If transport facilities are arranged as promised, the Department will have to consider the large number of vehicles required for this, the number of students they can transport at a time keeping in mind physical distancing norms, as well as the long distances to be covered.
A teacher from a government school in Tiruppur district said that in every exam centre, there are students from at least three schools taking up the exam together. While the School Education Department has said that fewer students will be accommodated in each classroom at exam centres, teachers have said that the same norms should apply to buses as well.
“In a 30-seater bus, not more than 15 to 20 students should be allowed to travel at a time and most schools have at least 40 students taking up the SSLC exams. In my school as well, around 45 students will take up the exams,” he said.
In many high schools located in rural areas, several students travel distances over 5 km on a daily basis. “We have students living nearly 8 km away who take two buses to reach school. The exam centre allotted to them might be even further than this and we are concerned about how all these students will be picked up and dropped to the exam centres on time,” said a high school teacher from Dindigul.
Chennai alone has 49,394 students who have registered to take up the exams from both private and government schools. Teachers here are worried since the city has over 600 areas earmarked as containment zones.
“If transport facilities are provided for the children, will they go near the areas which have a large number of cases? With restrictions on people travelling in and out of containment zones at present, we are concerned about how children will make it to the centres,” a Corporation school principal said.
Following the release of the class 10 board exam schedule on Tuesday, several teachers and students had raised concerns about the need to conduct exams from June 1 when the cases of COVID-19 are continuing to rise in the State.
“If transport facilities are provided, there are several other factors that need to be looked at including disinfecting the vehicles, providing sanitizers and ensuring that physical distancing is maintained,” said K. Ramesh, a teacher from Ranipet.
“Over all this, parents should be willing to send their children to do the exam. For the last plus 2 exam in March, some parents who lived inside containment zones were hesitant to send their children to write the exam. Many parents now are worried about the exams in June,” he said.
