CHENNAI: CBSE attempted to put to rest the controversy over organising Good Governance Day essay competitions on Christmas day.
CBSE had announced that an online essay competition on ‘Good Governance’ was to be held on Christmas day. Following criticism and a Delhi High Court order, CBSE announced that the essay competition will be open on December 26 too and students may submit the essay a day later.
In the city, several schools pointed out that they never received the notification. With schools being shut down for the holidays and staff on vacation, disseminating the information has not been possible, they say.
“The school has been closed for Christmas vacation. The staff is mostly on holidays. So there is no one to receive the information and send it even if the notification was sent to the school,” said a head of a PSBB school. The teacher pointed out that since they had not submitted any list of the students to the CBSE on the students who are participating for the competition, there was no way the CBSE too could have directly alerted the students.
Principal of the Vels Vidyashram, Ramya Ramannan pointed out that they were about to send the SMS only on Wednesday evening since they had not received the information till then.
“Since the schools had already shut down for the holidays, there wasn’t much coordination with the students on the competition. We could only motivate them to take it up during their holidays,” she said.
Meanwhile for the students of the higher classes, the revision examinations had already started, making students give the competition a slip.
On the other hand, some schools said they were lucky to get the message on December 23. “We got information about the extension by Tuesday and hence we were able to SMS the information. Many of our students are now taking the examination on the 26th. It is a laudable move,” said the Principal of Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram, Ajeeth Prasad Jain.