HYDERABAD: The Telangana government on Thursday issued orders to cancel the SSC Class X exams and inter first-year exams and postpone the inter second-year board exams, keeping in mind the safety of students and teachers amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao decided to cancel the SSC exams and postpone the Intermediate second year exams after a meeting with Education Minister Sabitha Indira Reddy, special chief secretary of education Chitra Ramachandran and other officials.
The decision of the state government came after the central government's decision to cancel the CBSE Class X board exams and postpone the Class XII board exams.
"Considering the present pandemic situation prevailing in the state and also keeping in view the CBSE notification dated 14.04.2021, the government hereby cancels all 10th class exams to be held from 17th May, 2021," reads the memo issued about a note received from the Chief Minister's Office.
According to the memo issued, the results of Class X students are to be prepared on the basis of objective criteria to be developed by the SSC Board, Telangana at a later date.
If any candidate is not satisfied with the marks allotted, he or she will be allowed to sit in an exam as and when the conditions are conducive.
According to the memo, all first-year students will be promoted without exams. The dates for the conduct of inter second-year exams will be announced 15 days before its conduct for which a review meeting would be conducted in the first week of June. All the second-year students having backlogs will be given grace marks for backlogs only. Besides this, the mandated 25 per cent weightage of Intermediate Public Exams will not be considered for EAMCET this year.
While the SSC exams were scheduled to be held from May 17 to 26, the intermediate exams were supposed to start from May 1 till 19.
This year, around 4.8 lakh candidates have registered for the SSC Class X exams and around 9 lakh for the Intermediate first and second years.
Earlier this month, the State Intermediate Board had postponed practical exams, which were scheduled to be held from April 7.
According to officials of the school education department, students from Class I to IX need not worry about exams as they would be promoted to the next class.
Last year about 5.34 lakh SSC students and around 9 lakh Intermediate students were promoted without writing the exams.