In the view of COVID-19 spread, the Rajasthan Government has decided to postpone the university exams indefinitely.
Rajasthan’s higher education department has declared summer vacations for all affiliated colleges of Rajasthan University from April 16 to May 30, 2020.
Higher education minister, Bhanwar Singh Bhati, said the authorities are exploring possibility of holding final-year exams in June. Admissions will similarly take place after June 15.
“A committee has been formed under the Rajasthan University VC R K Kothari to review the situation and prepare a report on how to conduct exams when the situation will become normal,” said Bhati in the statement.
The examination for final-year students of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes will take place in the first week of June. The semester or yearly exam for first-year and second-year UG students and semester and annual exam of PG students will take place after June 15.
Educational institutions in most countries are now closed to contain the spread of coronavirus, resulting in the home-schooling of millions of students globally.
Schools in India have been working hard in partnership with the parents and educational boards in creating a comprehensive online infrastructure for the effective remote learning of their students.
In light of Covid-19 pandemic, a wide array of public and private services has been suspended countrywide.
In line with its comprehensive approach, the government has tried to address the equally important issue of psychological health with Manodarpan, a programme that covers both parents and students at a time when unprecedented challenges and stress have raised mental health issues.
Elets digitalLEARNING magazine organized a webinar on “Boarding Schools & Virtual Learning: Is it possible?”. The webinar highlighted the way the boarding schools can review from the crisis. Dr Ravi Gupta, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, Elets Technomedia welcomed the eminent speakers.
Aditi Goradia, Managing Director, Billimoria High School, Panchgani, said “In times like this, many educators are coming together for betterment of education. Maharashtra was one of the first states to impose lockdown in the country. We have kids from all across the world and we are worried how to send students back home as we have international ones. We are also worried about the safety of students. In March, we stopped visitors and asked parents to stay away from the school.”
The big question is, do we have the internet connections to conduct classes and do we want to burden our children; the parents are worried about what’s going to happen next, but we are working every possible way to help our students, she added.
Dr. Monalisa Bal, Chairperson, KIIT International School, Bhubaneshwar, said “Our exams were conducted before March and by 15th the state govt has declared lockdown. We were working on how the teachers will take class in the pandemic. The huge challenge was conducting the board exams during the pandemic. We used the technology to our best and conducted our classes.”
“Earlier, the teachers were not comfortable with the online classes but with time it got eased off. The plan has to be there and we are giving case studies to students,” she added.
Dr. Jagpreet Singh, Headmaster, The Punjab Public School, Nabha, said “Our management took a wise decision to send children back home. The Punjab govt imposed lockdown across the state. The situation is unprecedented and we have never thought of conducting classes online. The challenge was to shift from the offline classes to online ones. The panic started when all schools started conducting online classes.”
There are three phases of education, teaching, learning and assessments. The change started, when we have to home learning, he added.
Lt. Gen. Surendra Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College, Ajmer, said “From 4th March, we went on a self quarantine mode. We completely shut down our campus and on 13th we decided to start our summer vacation. Our biggest challenge was to make the teachers change their mind-set. We have to provide training to teachers to take classes online. We have to take care of the professional and hygienic needs of teachers.”
The new challenge is because of the lockdown, students cannot go out, so we have to find some way to engage them, he added.
Amidst Covid-19 outbreak globally, the schools all over the nation and world, hold a great responsibility on their shoulders. In fact, I would say that, they are supposed to prove their existence in this period of adversity to extract opportunity through the best of their abilities and resources .
Mount Abu School had commenced online classes for the students’ right from the day, the decision about lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We are dealing with all aspects of the crisis, and assisting our students, staff and parents to overcome this battle. The school began with remote learning on 13th March 2020 for Grades 10 and 12 and on 1st April 2020 for rest of the grades. Meanwhile, our online activities and challenges were designed to keep students, staff and parents engaged in these highly anxious times. We found this time as a golden opportunity to polish technical know-how of our staff members and thus regular sessions on conducting remote learning were organised through MS Teams and Zoom.
The school conducted webinars for parents and students to raise Covid-19 awareness and to run crash courses on use of technology. Mount Abu Career & Guidance Cell conducted online webinars and one-to-one video calls for our students to deal with anxieties related to current crisis and related to stream selections. The school also celebrated World Health Day and Schools’ 22nd Foundation Day through digital platforms where all stakeholders of the school came together for a joyful merriment.
Our social media handles are conducting intensive awareness campaigns to ensure that our learning community is protected, safe and healthy. The school even conducted online PTMs, Online Orientation for new parents and home delivery of the new learning materials to ensure social distancing. Therefore, online solutions at Mount Abu are not restricted to remote learning or just one aspect of the crisis. Our response to the pandemic has been rather very pro-active.
I understand that sometimes students at home, feel disinterested as they don’t get that ambience to work as they get in class, so time to time motivational sessions are organized for them so that they don’t lose interest and keep themselves connected with the teachers at school as the most important thing is to give them individual attention which always act as a catalyst for their enhanced interest in the subject.
Moreover, the lectures delivered by the teachers include interactive worksheets which make the learners get more interested to perform as it is well known that experiential learning always lets the learners grasp the content easily. Online classes ,through the self-paced learning helps the learners to uncover their strengths and weaknesses, so it is important for online students to exercise strong time management skills so as to attend all the classes. Here regular conversation is the tools that keep the learners engaged in the task.
Regular feedback from the parents and students are taken regularly which is an excellent mechanism for maintaining the connection strong as it requires intense requirement for self-discipline and self direction.
Schools all across India are not only continuing regular education, but also effectively dealing with anxieties by keeping them engaged and building resilience and patience by showing that any enormous challenge can be dealt with a systematic action plan.
Jyoti Arora is Principal at Mount Abu Public School, Delhi and also an elected Governing Body Member of Central Board of Secondary Education. She has been awarded CBSE National Teachers Award for her relentless efforts in the field of school education. As an expert on education and related industries, she has authored many newspaper articles and participated in various panel discussions across the country and abroad. She is also heading Indraprastha Schools Sahodaya as President and Delhi Schools Sahodaya Complex as Vice President, which are clusters of more than 120 CBSE affiliated schools in Delhi NCR.
In the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has launched a portal that comprehensively covers all academic and research initiatives.
Launching the portal YUKTI (Young India Combating COVID with Knowledge, Technology and Innovation), Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal “Nishank” said he hoped it will help in planning and monitoring of activities related to COVID-19.
“Our primary aim is to keep our academic community healthy, both physically & mentally and to enable a continuous high-quality learning environment for learners”, Pokhriyal said.
YUKTI intends to highlight various initiatives and efforts taken by institutions in academics and research related to COVID-19.
The institutions can also share their strategies for tackling the COVID-19 situation.
“The portal will also establish a two-way communication channel between the Ministry of HRD and the institutions so that the Ministry can provide the necessary support system to the institutions,” the minister said.
The portal will cover both qualitative and quantitative parameters of the academic.
In the wake of Coronavirus outbreak, the Maharashtra government has decided to cancel the pending SSC or class 10 examinations.
State School Education Minister, Varsha Gaikwad said the pending Georgraphy and Work Experience papers have been cancelled. The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has been instructed by the govt to give marks based on the respective rules for these subjects.
The state government has also decided to cancel the class 9 and 11 examinations and the students will be promoted to the next grade based on their performance in the first semester.
On March 21, the Maharashtra government had announced that the last paper of the SSC (Class X)exam, which was scheduled to be held on March 23, has been postponed.
A total of 17,65,000 students had registered for class 10 board exam in Maharashtra.
The exams for class 9 and class 11 students were scheduled to be held in the state after April 10, 2020.
The HSC or class 12 board exams have already ended for Maharashtra board students.
Maharashtra government has already cancelled all examinations for classes 1 to 8.
In the view of COVID-19 outbreak, India’s technical education regulator, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has collated various skilling and certification programmes for students free of cost till May 15.
The digital platform Enhancement in Learning with Improvement in Skills (ELIS) is available on free.aicte-india.org.
These courses cover subjects like diploma in machine learning, data analytics, Big Data, python and many more.
The courses are usually priced raging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000. However, in the current lockdown period, they are offered free to students who enroll till May 15.
The AICTE said “Many companies have now come forward and offered their e-learning contents free of cost to learners.”
The portal was formally launched by Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman AICTE along with M.P Poonia, vice chairman AICTE and Rajive Kumar, member secretary, AICTE.
AICTE does not take any responsibility for the contents nor copyright issues, if any, the regulator said on the website,free.aicte-india.org.
Telangana Intermediate Board (TSBIE) has hinted that TS Inter Result 2020 will be released soon after things get normal.
The report comes amid rising concerns of the students about the pending TS Intermediate Results 2020 which have been postponed due to the on-going lockdown.
The board is yet to issue any formal notification over the results. The BIE Telangana Intermediate Results 2020 will be available on official website i.e. bie.telangana.gov.in.
According to the official update, currently, the Board of Intermediate Education, Telangana has put on hold the evaluation process for then TS Inter Result 2020.
However, soon after the lockdown is lifted, the evaluation work will be restarted by teachers on war-footing to be able to bring out Telangana Inter Result 2020 on time.
For 2020 session, the TS Inter Exam 2020 were held in the month of March. TSBIE Inter 1st Year Exam 2020 was held from 4th to 21st March 2020 while 2nd Year Inter Exam 2020 was held from 5th to 23rd March 2020, just before the lockdown began.
In the view of lockdown across the country, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) of the Delhi region has started online classes for Class 9 to 12 on Facebook and YouTube. All the schools and colleges are closed over Corona spread in mid-March.
The KV has created a team of teachers across all streams and classes to begin live interactive classes. The timetable will be sent to all the students through WhatsApp school groups and Youtube.
There are over 13,343 Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan subscribers on the YouTube channel in the Delhi Region. The online classes have gained a huge response from parents and students and have approximately garnered 90,000 views in just two days. The classes have 40,000 comments on the classes.
The teachers have also created a playlist on the YouTube channel for students to view these lessons and class subject-wise.
Apart from this, different software like PowerPoint, movie makers, and screen recorders, etc also are being used by teachers to create attractive educational videos.
Homeworks and assignments are sent to students using different apps/software.
To help the students during lockdown, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Friday released updated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for the Class 10 and 12 board exams 2020.
Students appearing in the CBSE Class 10 and Class 12 board exams 2020 can check the updated FAQs.
Students can check the updated FAQs on CBSE official site- cbse.nic.in
One of the updated FAQ tries to answer the query of a Class 11 student who has been detained in his class due to poor academic record.
He is worried that some of his friends have been promoted based on their earlier results. Another FAQ talks about board’s decision not to conduct any more exams for class 10 and class 12 students in schools abroad and what will happen to the results of the class 12 students.
Earlier, CBSE had announced that it will be conducting the class 10 and 12 examinations for only 29 main subjects which are crucial for promotion and admission to higher educational institutions.
The decision was taken after the Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had a detailed meeting with the Education secretary Amit Khare and other top officials.
Amid lockdown, Board of school education Haryana (BSEH) has decided to allow teachers to check answer sheets of class 10th board exam’s from homes.
According to an official the board has assigned over 6,500 teachers to check answer copies of the class 10 students.
The official also said, “These teachers will report to their respective block education officer, who will give them a bundle 300 copies to be evaluated by April 21 and submit the same on April 22. The teachers have been given different time slots to appear before BEOs to maintain social distancing amid coronavirus scare.”
The board was initially planning to call teachers to centres to evaluate class 10 copies but it was cancelled to avoid gathering of teachers.
Nearly 3.71 lakh students had appeared for class 10 board exams before board postponed exams to be conducted from March 19 to 31.
