Reconsider holding class 12 board exams: Dr Gandhi appeals to PM Modi

Lucknow, June 11 : In a letter dated 10th June, 2021, Dr Jagdish Gandhi, Founder of the World's largest City Montessori School with over 55,000 students has appealed to Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modito reconsider holding class 12 board exams in August, given the rapidly declining cases of corona in the country.

        "It is important that CBSE decides to conduct the class 12 Board exams to prevent injustice being meted out to the hard working meritorious students whose entire career and life-chances will be at stake if they are not given a chance to show their academic prowess and intellectual mettle", he said in the letter.

        Addressing an online press conference here today, Dr Jagdish Gandhi informed that the letter to Prime Minister Modi further says that due to cancellation of the class 12 board exams, students now have an acute anxiety about the algorithm of calculation of marks and the fairness and transparency of the process. If marks are decided by the board on the basis of internal school assessments and not through the third-party evaluation system of a board exam, many schools may be tempted to inflate marks of the students. Another fear is that highly talented students will be bracketed with the weaker students, putting them at a grossly unfair loss.

        The class 12 board exam marks give a clear, objective and fine-grained criterion for admission to universities which define a cut-off percentage for admitting students. If board exams are not held, will there be nuanced-enough marks information for universities to declare cut-offs, and if cut-off percentages are not fixed, it would be an uphill task for universities to conduct admissions on the basis of entrance examinations of a huge number of students from all over the country. Last year in 2020, 5 lakh 63 thousand students applied for admission in Delhi University and its campuses alone, while only 57,312 gained admission. If universities have to hold entrance exams after all, then the whole logic of cancelling class 12 boards will be negated anyway, and they may as well be held, Dr Gandhi further writes in his letter to Prime Minister Modi.

        Dr Gandhi further writes that the CBSE Board had reassured in a recent statement that the option has been kept open to conduct the board exams if corona cases decline sufficiently. Due to the efforts of Hon'ble PM Modi and the government, corona cases are down drastically and even the worst affected states of Delhi and Maharashtra are opening up again and by August, the pandemic situation will be much under control. Therefore the month of August will be most conducive for the conduct of the class 12 Board exam which would be not only in the interest of the students but also in the nation's interest.

        He said that the National Testing Agency (NTA) has announced to release the exam schedule for NEET and JEE entrance by next week. In such a situation, canceling the 12th class board exam will be unfair to the students, especially the meritorious students across the country who have been assiduously preparing for the board exams for the last two years amidst the challenges of the pandemic.