the goan I network
PANAJI
Amid the government ordered lockdown, the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Examination (GBSHSE) has permitted schools to exercise the choice of doing away altogether with final examinations for students of classes I to VIII and also IX and XI and assess them for the current scholastic year on the basis of their aggregate scores in previous exams and assignments held during the year.
Schools, according to the Board, can also opt to conduct the final examination by postponing them. The choices will have to be made, however, in consultation with parent-teacher associations, the Board has decreed.
A sense of confusion, however, prevails both among headmasters and the parent-student community over the issue. A section of parents is also up-in-arms against the assessment of students on basis of scores in previous exams held through the year, depending on how well or badly their wards had fared in the previous exams.
Meanwhile, Mapusa’s Saraswat Vidhyalaya, was among the first schools in the State to cancel the final examinations for students studying in its classes I to VIII.
“There will be no final exams -- SE II -- for students of Std 1st (First) to VIIIth (Eighth) as per RTE Act,” the headmistress in charge of the Mapusa School, said in a notice addressed to parents early on Monday.
The students shall be promoted through ‘Continuous Evaluation’ throughout the year as per article 29(2) (1)(h) of the RTE Act, the school further said in the notice.
The headmasters association, meanwhile, is expected to hold deliberations with officials of the education department as well as the GBSHSE to clarify the matter and put the record straight in the next few days.
The lockdown until March 31 ordered by the State government and which came
into force from Monday to help the administration fight the threat of COVID-19, now a global pandemic, has thrown into disarray academic work in schools for the remainder of the current academic year which normally ends in March-April.
The Goa University had on Sunday announced that examinations in all of its affiliated Colleges offering undergraduate courses in all streams will be deferred to April 15 and beyond instead of the earlier April 5 onwards to tide over the March 16-31 lockdown impact on completion of pre-exam academic work.
Clarity however, eludes the school education sector as of now and officials will be stretched in the next few days to clear the suspense.
