Students React To 12th Board Exam Cancellation

Brut India

Following weeks of uncertainty, the Central government cancelled the Class 12 board exams. Brut spoke to four students to find out what they thought...

Transcript

00:00I'm very happy that the government finally took this decision of cancelling our board examinations.

00:05I wasn't glad per se.

00:07I wasn't prepared mentally or physically to take that much of stress.

00:10It reduced my chances of getting into my choice of colleges.

00:20This batch of class 12 has been studying in the same class for about 13 to 14 months

00:27and not even knowing if the exams were gonna happen or not.

00:30Personally for me, it was a very tough time.

00:33I lost my grandmother about two months ago due to COVID.

00:36It was at that time that I learned how to change oxygen cylinders

00:42and every night we have to take shifts to check our aunt's oxygen levels.

00:49Most of my family members and I were suffering from COVID-19.

00:52We were in a state of panic and I wasn't prepared

00:54mentally or physically to take that much of stress.

00:57I'm not glad that boards have gotten cancelled this year for a number of reasons.

01:00Mainly because I was looking at getting into these merit-based colleges

01:04and now since boards have been scraped off

01:07and these colleges haven't switched on to entrance examination modes

01:11and I'm estimating our admissions based on

01:13class 11 percentages and internal examinations which I think is very unfair.

01:17Personally, I believe that this decision was terribly executed.

01:21Despite dithering and procrastinating

01:23at the cost of the students' mental health and time

01:26for over a month the administration failed to deliver.

01:29Was the right decision taken by our government

01:32as most of the students have lost their loved ones including their parents

01:37and most of the students have not even been vaccinated in urban areas

01:42and the situation in rural areas is even worse.

01:45The health and safety of all the students would have been compromised.

01:49I wasn't satisfied since the implementation of the decision was downright poor

01:54and it did not fulfill its aim of providing complete transparency

01:57to the main stakeholders, that is the students.

02:00Adjusting to online assessments, submissions and projects was a task in itself

02:06since our rather archaic education system is not suited for this distance learning.

02:10My main worry at the moment is these admission procedures

02:13of colleges who haven't switched to entrance examination modes.

02:16I think they may implement a process where the aggregate marks

02:20of the home examinations in class 12th would be considered

02:23to replace the board result yardstick.

02:26Which I think should not be the case

02:27because that's not fair to the students who are banking on boards this year.

02:31I mean this year has been tough on everyone

02:33and then expecting students to have done exceptionally well

02:36in their pre-boards and then done examinations

02:38and then you know basing admissions based on these marks I think is not fair.

02:42Personally, I think that with the cancellation of board examinations

02:47the universities may let go of their cut-offs

02:51and might mainly focus on taking their own entrance examinations.

02:55Here's where the government went awry like they did with our medical infrastructure.

03:00Having taken such a long time with the announcement of the decision itself

03:03or soon after it, they should have made available the procedure

03:07that could be used to derive the marks of the student.

03:10Secondly, a tentative timetable should have been published

03:13so that the students who wish to appear for the examinations

03:16for whom the examination bears significance

03:19could have been presented at least with the option to do so.

03:22I think what happened with me might have happened with thousands of other students

03:27and affected their lives and their studies.

03:30The pandemic has absolutely been stressful for all of us

03:33because we had to get up early in the morning, sit right in front of our screens.

03:37It was a tough job for us because we had not followed this kind of pattern earlier.

03:41We've spent our entire last year of education sitting behind laptop screens.

03:44It's all been very frustrating and also has taken a huge toll on everyone's mental health as well.

03:50Now again, the majority of even my own friends are left in the dark,

03:54faced with a dilemma whether to study or whether to first wait for the results to come out.

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