ICSE exams: High Court accepts new petition seeking options

The parents have also stated how the demand to grade students based on the average marks is not clear. File pic

While the conundrum over the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) board exam continues, a whole new aspect has come to the foray on Monday.

The Bombay High Court which is already hearing the matter of ICSE board exams accepted an intervention by a group of parents petitioning that there cannot be blanket
decisions for all or no examinations at all.

A group of six parents who filed the petition feel there should be options so that everyone can decide if or not they want to appear for exams.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole issue of conducting ICSE board exams in July became a debatable issue.

Soon, Arvind Tiwari, a parent filed a petition in HC against holding the exams in July and a few more petitions on similar lines were accepted by the court.

However, the HC accepted Monday's petition as an intervention in the ongoing case. The petitioners press on the need of exams stating that there should be an option to appear for the examination for those who want to. The private board too has maintained a similar stand while it works on the clarity of methodology to be used for scoring those students who do not appear for the examination.

Ramchandran Narayanan, one of the petitioners, said, "We have taken the step after observing that like us there are many parents and children who want to appear for the exams. While there are schools that have held multiple pre-board examinations, there are children who may not have been able to appear for it. There are students who may have worked really hard especially after pre-board to score well in the final exams. Similarly, there are children who were depending on these pending papers to score high as those are their strong subjects. There are several reasons due to which we feel that a blanket decision of not holding an examination for all is not fair."

The parents have also stated how the demand to grade students based on the average marks is not clear as for example if the remaining paper is Hindi, how any child can be given an average score based on the paper of science held earlier.

"Moreover for admission to class XI, these children will be pitted against other board children. We don't know if our children will lag behind because of few marks due to this," added Narayanan.

Arvind Tiwari, who filed the first petition in the case, said, "I have pointed to a case from Karnataka where the father of a child who appeared for exams was detected COVID-19 positive following which other children from the same class had to be quarantined and their family. By allowing exams, we are not only putting children in danger but also multiplying the danger of the spread of infection.

The matter was adjourned on Monday with some more time given to the Council of ICSE to present the details of methodology to be used."

06
Total no. of parents who filed the petition on Monday

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