CBSE secretary says board exams will be conducted 'for sure', schedule to be announced soon

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is making arrangements to conduct the annual board exams after a few months, and will soon reveal how it will be holding the assessments, reports quoted a top official as saying at an ASSOCHAM webinar on Friday. Anurag Tripathi, secretary, CBSE, was speaking about the Centre’s New Education Policy (NEP) 2020. He was quoted by The Times of India as saying that during March-April they were “flummoxed about how to move forward, but schools and teachers rose to the occasion and transformed themselves with new technology for teaching purposes, turning online classes into the new normal”. Tripathi  added that the board exams “will happen for sure” and that a schedule for it will be announced. However, he didn’t confirm if there would be any change in the exam time or if any change would be made to the exam format or mode. So far, only Maharashtra and Gujarat Board have decided to postpone Board Exams 2021 till May. The exams for both class 10 and class 12 in both states would be conducted in May instead of February-March. The report further adds that both CBSE and CISCE are considering reducing syllabus of Classes 10 and 12 board examinations further.   He also noted that a common aim of all education policies, including NEP 2020, has been to shift students towards experiential learning. Tripathi said that the NEP 2020’s main aim is to make a shift to skill- and competency-based education, and added that there is a need to transform and follow the entire pedagogy based teaching-learning process be it classroom teaching, face-to-face teaching or online teaching.