Video Editor: Vivek Gupta
“When the parliament is not functioning, how can we expect children to sit in an examination hall and write their exams safely,” asks Colonel Amit Bathla (Retd), who along with other parents, has moved the Supreme Court against the conduct of the pending Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examinations in July.
In an interview to The Quint, Col Bathla stated that conducting examinations in the middle of coronavirus pandemic is not safe, as even if one asymptomatic student turns up, they may endanger the lives of many.
“So a child can be sitting in an exam centre next to your child, and may be having all the symptoms, but is not aware of them. And so he passes it on to another child. The child gets back home, you have parents who are suffering from other problems as well.”Col Bathla (Retd.)
In the petition, Bathla and other argued that since the number of exam centres have been increased from 3,000 to 15,000, ensuring safety measures at every such centre would be an exercise in “futility and an eyewash.”
He also pointed out that exams can’t be conducted in a contact-less form as answer scripts need to be distributed and the collected. Moreover, Col Bathla (Retd) “says that children are going to mingle with each other when they meet after three months in a board examination, before the examination and after the examination and the risk is very high.”
What Are the Alternatives?
Here’s what he says some alternatives are:
- Grade students on the basis of averages of the four or five exams that have been conducted.
- Conclude examinations based on internal assessment, which CBSE evaluates out of 20/30/40 marks.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)