CHENNAI: Amidst confusion on how Class 12 State Board students will be evaluated, the Tamil Nadu government has said that a combination of results from Classes 10, 11 and 12 will be used. Announcing the evaluation formula on Saturday, Chief Minister MK Stalin in a statement said that the results will be announced on July 31.
Stalin said that the decision was taken after consulting with various stakeholders and experts including the School Education and Higher Education department principal secretaries, Vice Chancellor of the Madras University, Higher Secondary School principals and other experts.
The board exams for the 2020-21 batch of Class 12 students in state board schools were cancelled owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the evaluation criteria, the maximum weightage of 50 per cent is given to Class 10 marks, with 20 per cent for Class 11 results and 30 per cent for Class 12 results.
The government has also announced how each of the three parts will be calculated. The Class 12 results can be further split -- 20 per cent for the practical exams that students completed earlier this year and 10 per cent for internal exams conducted by the school. If any student did not take up the Class 12 practical exams owing to Covid-19, their Class 11 practical exam marks will be taken into consideration. If they haven’t taken up both the Class 12 and Class 11 practical exams, the marks they have scored in written exams through Class 10 and 11 will be taken into consideration for awarding marks.
If a particular subject does not have practical modules, the internal marks will be calibrated out of 30 marks.
For the second part, the individual subject-based score of the written exam alone will be taken into consideration. For students who haven’t cleared or written the class 11 exams, the government has asked for 35 marks to be awarded for each subject since it would not be possible for those students to take up the exams again.
When it comes to the component of the Class 10 marks, the average of the three highest subject scores secured by the student will be used.
Speaking to reporters later, School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi said that the panel of experts came up with 12 different formulas to calculate the result that will be printed on the Class 12 mark sheet. "Finally, we picked this strategy after discussing with the Chief Minister," he said. He said that the highest weightage was given to Class 10 marks as the current batch of Class 12 students wrote their Class 10 public exams before the pandemic in person.
If a student has not taken up any exam -- written or practical -- they will be given the opportunity to take up the exam as a private candidate. "There are 63 students who are in this situation," he said. Those who have already registered to take up the exam as a private candidate will be given a chance to write the exam on a later date when the Covid-19 pandemic situation improves, he said. Roughly about 30,000 students write the exams as private candidates.
Students who are unhappy with their results based on this evaluation criteria will be given a chance to take up the board exams again at a later date along with private candidates and the marks that they score in that exam will be considered as final.
Speaking to Express, R Visalakshi, the head of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Association, said that many students do not perform very well in the Class 11 exams as they usually take Class 10 and 12 exams more seriously. "However, most students score well in their practicals. So the two scores will balance each other out," she said. She added that clarity on how higher education admissions will be carried out is the need of the hour, as there is a lot of confusion among students and parents. Visalakshi however added that the government should consider conducting a public exam if the situation improves in the next couple of months.
The decision is one that students and parents will have to accept due to lack of choices, said S Arumainathan, the president of the Tamil Nadu Parents Teachers Association. "Following CBSE's suit, the government has decided to take a similar approach for results evaluation. However, it would be ideal to conduct exams in person and delay the start of the academic year," he said.
PK Ilamaran, leader of the Tamil Nadu Teachers Association, said that the current batch of Class 12 students did not get to write only one exam in Class 11. "So using this method will be feasible for most students," he said.