The Human resource development (HRD) will hold meetings with the secretaries of state education department to make certain, standardisation in the final assessment of students pursuing degrees.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry is to meet state education secretaries this week to ensure uniformity with regard to the final assessment of students pursuing degrees
The meeting is being held based on the cancellation of final year exams announced by some state due to covid chaos. This goes against the University Grants Commission, the prime authority of higher education, and has stated that the council will not accept the state’s declaration to cancel the exam against its ministry.
A government official said that “A few states are not following protocol and are announcing cancellation of exams at colleges and universities. What they are ignoring is that a degree without UGC approval does not mean anything. It’s there in the UGC Act, and it is binding. What they are doing is putting students’ future at risk and creating confusion.”
The guidelines of the UGC are obligatory and it may not take back its standing. Also, the states that have cancelled the exams may not be considered as legal.
An official reported that “The HRD ministry will meet the state education secretaries, and possibly health authorities this week and find out what their problems are. When we sought feedback from states and experts on exams before UGC issued the guidelines recently, some 70% of respondents said exams will be beneficial and should be conducted.”
The two states, Delhi and West Bengal have declared the cancellation of the final year exams due to the covid-19 pandemic. They state to promote the students on the basis of the internal exams and their performance in the previous semester exams. The other four states including Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have mentioned to the UGC about their reservations on the UGC’s rules and guidelines.
Another official reported that “The UGC guidelines are not asking colleges and universities to hold exams now; the regulator has given institutions time till end September to hold exams. The guidelines also don’t mandate the mode of exams; institutions can adopt any mode—be it an online exam, a mix of online and offline or face-to-face classroom exams wherever possible…where is the motive here of putting the students’ lives at risk?”
He also mentioned that the UGC is in considerate of such measure as even the foreign universities have taken online-mode of conducting exams to evaluate the students.
The Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia reported that the state has come up with the alternate measures to evaluate the students and award them degrees. The chief minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote a letter to the Prime Minister with this regard. Followed by Delhi, the Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister regarding the cancellation of exams.
The UGC reports that, the education is equally important as the health of the students. It stated that “. “Academic evaluation of students is very important milestone in any education system. The performance in examinations gives confidence and satisfaction to the students and is a reflection of competence, performance and credibility that is necessary for global acceptability.” Further, the colleges would be open only for the exams. UGC said in a statement that “The terminal semester(s)/ final year(s) examinations be conducted by the universities/ institutions by the end of September 2020, in offline (pen and paper)/online/ blended (online + offline) mode.”