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