NEW DELHI: With a slight rise in Covid-19 cases in city schools, Class 12 students are taking to social media asking to cancel Term II board exams, starting April 26 and rather allow them to study for the CUET exam scheduled for July. Hash tag “Cancel Board Exams” has been trending on Twitter where students question, ‘Classes in Zoom and exams in room?’
A student tweeted, “Why are we made to sit in classes when the Covid-19 cases are rising? Why are we being forced to study for boards when universities will not even consider the scores? Why can’t schools skip boards exams and let us study for CUET?”
Abdullah, a student of Don Bosco School said, “This only concerns students who want to take admission in central universities. What about those who want to go to private universities or go abroad for higher studies? Their merit will count and they will have to study for boards.”
Meanwhile, coaching centres in Delhi are busy minting money by enrolling students for the crash courses and online programmes for cracking the CUET exam. These centres charge Rs 80-90,000 for the courses. Jibani Swanni Kapoor, Associate Vice President of Pratham Test Prep said, “There are more than 100 students who have enrolled for our classroom coaching preparations for CUET while, around 3,500 students applied online classes. The focus has clearly shifted to CUET as many students who have boards are also taking classes for CUET.”
“We are charging approximately Rs 35,000 for the three-month crash programmes and Rs 74,000 to Rs 80,000 for the online classes,” she added. Ghaziabad based Aapt Prep Academy has been holding five classes a week for one and half hours daily and one of their representatives said that the enrolment for the CUET coaching has been witnessing a rise.
The academy promises more than 400 hours of interactive sessions with their classroom packages costing Rs 25,000-35,000 whereas their online classroom sessions vary between Rs 79,000 to Rs 99,000 for preparation of CUET.
The other coaching centres such as DCG Academy, Exemplar Point among others are offering live interactive classes, practice questions, mock tests, physical study material, topic tests, and access to a current affairs compendium as well.
Dr Sudha Acharya, chairperson of National Progressive Schools’ Conference said, “We are not opposing the CUET exam but some weightage should be given to the board exams such that children can equally concentrate on both. Delhi University has declared they will consider only CUET score for its undergraduate courses. What is the logic left to study for term II exams?”
Acharya added, “I wrote to the Prime Minister, education minister to assign some weightage to board exams.”
COACHING CENTRES PLAY SMART
Coaching centres are busy minting money by enrolling students for the crash courses and online programmes for cracking the Central Universities Entrance Test (CUET) exam
What the centres promise?
Aapt Prep Academy promises more than 400 hours of interactive sessions with their classroom packages of `25,000-`35,000 and cost of online classroom sessions vary from `79,000 to `99,000