Academic calendar may be tweaked

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:13.04.2020

The Centre is likely to ask school education departments and higher education institutions to reschedule the academic calendar by advancing summer break to minimise the loss of academic days in the 2020-21 session owing to the Covid-19 outbreak.

A panel under UGC is also likely to submit its recommendation to the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) on Monday suggesting start of online classes for higher education institutions (HEIs) during lockdown. According to a source, the MHRD is likely to request state governments and HEIs to advance their summer break and reopen as soon as the lockdown gets over and conduct the pending exams. “There is a possibility the lockdown period from April 1 will be considered the summer break. So probably by mid or third-week of May, academic activities may restart,” the official said.

Higher education institutions likely to be asked to conduct admission process online

During lockdown, the institutions will be asked to conduct classes online and leave the practical part for the post-lockdown period. While the option of conducting online examinations is also being looked at, public universities are learnt to have expressed their inability due to multiple factors. However, many private universities have already started planning to conduct online exams in case the lockdown period gets extended further.

In the meantime, institutions will be asked to make use of this period for online classes as the students are at their homes. Higher education institutions are also likely to be asked to conduct the admission process online completely only to save time. However, for government institutions online semester examination is not likely to be recommended due to multiple factors include accessibility and online infrastructure issue,” said the official.

Competitive exams such as JEE main and advanced, NEET UG 2020 and UGC-NET, among others which have already been postponed, will be further delayed and likely to push the undergraduate and postgraduate admission schedule beyond July-August 2020, that too if the lockdown is lifted in May.

With over 30 school education boards either yet to complete their board exams or postponing their evaluation process due to the lockdown, the results will be further delayed. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) had to postpone their class X and XII exams, suspend their evaluation process and were supposed to take a call on April 15, post the 21-day lockdown. However, with some states already announcing the extension of period till the end of this month, sources said that boards will have to continue waiting till the lockdown is lifted.

According to a MHRD source, “Now the examinations will have to be further postponed. Earlier this month, CBSE had already decided to cut down the number of subjects for which class X and XII board exams are to be rescheduled.” CBSE announced that it will conduct exams for only 29 of the 41pending subjects.

Full report on www.toi.in

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