THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Anashwara Pradeep, a class 10 student of Government Cotton Hill Girls’ Higher Secondary School, was both thrilled and nervous on Thursday. She rushed from the auto, accompanied by her mother, to attend this year’s SSLC examinations. Hiding her anxious face inside the mask, she joined the queue for temperature check and sanitising her hands before entering the campus. The sight of her close friends a little far away from the gate made Anashwara forget the exam pressure and called out an ‘all the best ‘ to her pals while maintaining social distancing.
As this year’s SSLC exams started on Thursday afternoon, many students at the centre seemed tension free. Most were excited to meet their friends after a long gap. Lovely B and friends Amritha and Athira took a stroll across the campus to catch a sight of their school, which they missed the whole year.
“We missed our school days due to Covid-19. We were able to learn our lessons through online classes though,” says Lovely. “But it would have been much easier to learn our lessons if we had real classes instead of online. It’s a great feeling to attend school everyday. The lockdown days made me realise that,”Athira says.
Ask them about the exam preparations and Amritha confessed “Tuitions also came to our rescue. But we are still not confident with Mathematics. Our first exam was Malayalam and it is an easy subject.” Meanwhile, many felt less nervous as model exams conducted post-lockdown helped them experience the offline mode.
“Pressure on students was reduced as we had given them the focus areas on every subject. The model examination had covered 75 per cent of these and kids got an idea of the question pattern. They will score good even if they attempt only questions from the focus areas,” says class teacher Ajaykumar. He later gave some tips to relax his students.
But Nazriya S B could not hide her tension. “We have covered our portions well. But in online classroom, we were not able to respond well like in real classes and it sometimes gave us a blank feeling. Teachers helped with separate video call sessions and cleared our doubts." However, parents looked tense. “Sanskrit is easy for my daughter. But science is tough. I doubt how helpful the online classes were. Though the teachers had covered the portions online, I doubt if the students were able to follow them like in real classes,” Sheejaji V I, a parent, said.