A sigh of relief: CBSE to conduct Class X and XII Exams early

Hyderabad: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to conduct Class X and XII examinations to declare results early from the academic year 2019. This comes as a sigh of relief to the students studying Class XII in the schools affiliated to the Central board in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Because of the delay in declaration of Class XII CBSE results, students have been posing problems in appearing for EAMCET.

For example, the State Higher Education Councils of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh had to intervene to accommodate the Class XII students from the CBSE schools allowing them to appear in the APEAMCET-2018 and TSEAMCET-2018 based on their internet mark sheets. Also, conveners of the EAMCETs of both the State had to withhold the announcing of their EAMCET-2018 ranks. But, to go ahead with announcing the ranks for the students who have completed the Intermediate state boards of TS and AP.

Giving the reasons for the CBSE Class XII students facing problems, officials said the CBSE allowed Class XII students to apply for verification of marks, obtaining photocopies of evaluated answer sheets starting from June 1 to 22, 2018. In turn, this had come in clash with the counselling schedule of the EAMCETs. However, an Apex court judgment on the commencement of schedule of the academic year left the officials of the State Higher Education Council’s not able to give any assurance to hold back the process.

It was against this backdrop that the CBSE had decided to bring new changes in its examination schedules following a direction from the Delhi High Court to fix the academic schedule of the board coming in clash with the admission process of the Delhi University. Accordingly, the examinations for vocational and related subjects will be held in the second half of February 2019 and for all the other core academic subjects in March 2019.

The CBSE said that “Unlike most other Boards, CBSE does not have any streams or fixed combination of subjects at senior secondary level. At present the examination date sheet of CBSE begins from March, and it extends to seven weeks or more, to be able to accommodate all possible combinations of subjects. Due to this, results go on to the fourth week of May, and the re-evaluation process gets completed only in the month of July." However, by this time, the admissions in Delhi University and many other universities will be almost completed, it said. To address this issue the board has decided to bring the changes to give an early declaration of results including for those applied for re-evaluation.

Speaking to The Hans India, Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) Chairman Prof T Papi Reddy said, "We cannot wait for long until the other boards declare the results keeping lakhs of students from the State board on the wait. But, we had accommodated the Class XII students of the CBSE schools to appear for entrance as well as for the counselling in 2018," he said. The CBSE was bringing such a change to declare the results early then it would help the Class XII students to appear for EAMCET and other entrance tests and to take admissions at undergraduate courses without any worries, he added.

BY VRC Phaniharan