CHENNAI: State Board students from Classes V and VIII, who will write public exams for the first time, have to prepare from the entire year’s syllabus. Parents, teachers and students went into a state of panic after the model question papers for these exams revealed that questions were asked from all three semesters’ syllabus. The government had released the model public exam paper earlier this week. For the first time, the students realised they would be tested on the entire syllabus and not just the third semester portions. This has shocked students, parents and teachers.
Since 2012, the government has been following the trimester pattern in which the entire year’s syllabus would be divided into three segments. Students, until class 9, had to study only that semester’s syllabus for each semester exam, reducing their stress.Students used to write their first semester exam in September, second in December and third in March or April. However, the government did not, through official announcements, declare that the public exams will be based on the entire year’s syllabus.
“The semester-based pattern was rolled out to reduce exam stress on young students. Children should be allowed to remain curious and not be pushed hard to learn only for an exam,” said PK Ilamaran, leader of Tamil Nadu Government Teachers’ Association. While the introduction of board exam itself will put tremendous stress on young children, learning will come to a stand-still if they are pushed into studying the whole syllabus at such a young age, he added.
An official from the School Education Department said the entire year’s syllabus is being questioned so that schools do not ignore the first two semesters’ syllabus. “We do NOT want students to be taught only the third semester syllabus. Which is why we are testing them on everything,” the official said adding it was self-explanatory that public exams tested the entire year’s curriculum.
Many parents and students have lost or thrown away textbooks and notebooks from the previous semesters, and found themselves in soup after the model question papers were released, said S Arumainathan of TN Students-Parents Welfare Association.“As the government had not announced this earlier, many students and parents have not preserved their textbooks and notebooks well. Several parents have called me over the last couple of days saying they do not have the first semester resources,” he said.
Students from private matriculation schools are in more trouble as many of them follow private publishers and textbooks until class 8. They switch over the State Board syllabus only from class 9 or 10.
“We had chosen a publication that had more illustrations and exercises so that the textbook looks more engaging for the children. In the beginning of the academic year, we were not aware of the public exams,” said the principal of a private matriculation school at the heart of the city. She added that the school had instructed parents to purchase the third semester books and trained students on it, as the government had made no official announcement changing the semester pattern.
“Teachers are trying to teach answers to the State Board book-back questions at the end of each chapter for all semesters now. Parents are also scrambling to find the textbooks for the first two semesters,” she said.
The government’s announcement in 2019 introducing public exams for students in class 5 and 8 had received significant backlash from the public. Many had said this would immensely increase stress on the students and propagate the habit of rote learning from an exam point of view.