BENGALURU: In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Karnataka government has decided to promote all intermediate semester students pursuing degree and post-graduation courses, including engineering, and diploma courses for the academic year 2019-20 without examinations.
Further, the government also announced that examinations for the final semester students would be conducted before the end of September this year, as per UGC guidelines.
During a press conference on Friday, the DyCM & Minister of Higher Education Dr C N Ashwath Narayan added that the decision will be limited to the academic year 2019-20 only. However, he said that the KCET Exam 2020 will be conducted by the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) as per schedule on July 30-31.
“COVID-19 has disrupted the education system and classes could not be held on time. Online learning introduced during the lockdown has received a good response and the government promptly tried its best to reach the last person in the chain. Amidst this, the government mulled conducting offline classes and examinations too, but owing to increase in the viral spread, that has been dropped and it has been decided to pass and promote all intermediate semester students. The concerned universities have been intimated to conduct examinations for all the final year/semester students,” he added.
The intermediate semester students will be assessed based on a comprehensive evaluation scheme with internal assessment marks and previous year’s/semester’s marks considered in a 50:50 ratio. For students in their first semester/year, the evaluation will be completely based on internal assessment marks.
“If students want to better their scores, provisions will be made for them to face examinations during the next semester and students who fail to succeed in the comprehensive evaluation process shall face examinations for the respective subjects during the next semester. Backlog subjects will be allowed to carry over as well,” the DyCM explained.
The online classes for the academic year 2020-21 will begin from September 1 and offline classes from October 1. A helpline number has been set up for students - 080-22341394.