BENGALURU: Starting this academic year 2018-19, summer holidays may be cut short by a month for second year pre-university students of government colleges. Classes are likely to begin in May instead of the usual June. The Department of Pre-university Education wants to take this step in order to adopt a private college model to better prepare government college students for academics.
In the current academic year, PU I classes will conclude on Wednesday. The early wind-up is a result of the upcoming Assembly elections and advancement of PU II exams. A senior official of the department said, “If we start classes for PU II courses on June 1, then the students get a three-month vacation, which is a complete waste of time.”
The department has decided to start classes after PU II exams conclude for the present batch. “After exams, there will be a 15-day period for evaluation and then we will start classes for the next PU II batch. Later, when teachers go for evaluation work, students will get a vacation and the classes will resume after the completion of the evaluation work,” the official explained.
The official added that the faculty members need more time to cover the NCERT syllabus, so cutting down the summer holidays will help. “Cutting down the holidays will also help students revise their lessons at the end of the academic year. We hope that beginning the classes early will help our students perform on par with private college students,” the official added. The final decision will be announced in the next 15 days.