Agony: CBSE XII Students Stuck in A Never Ending Loop of Indecision Over Fate of Exams

Caught in an endless loop of indecision. That is how CBSE students, waiting to find out if they will have to appear for Grade XII examinations, say they feel as the Indian government finds itself kicking the decision can down the road. It is procrastination ad absurdum, say CBSE schools, students and parents in the UAE who have told SchoolsCompared.com they just want a decision – one way or another.

Uncertainty regarding Grade XII exams look set to come to an end,  until the Indian government asked the Supreme Court of India (SCI) to give it two more days, until Thursday, June 3, to decide about the fate of the examinations. The decision: Whether exams will be held at a later date, or be cancelled altogether. The Indian government has made a similar plea about the fate of Grade XII pupils taking CISCE based exams.

The decision to conduct the CBSE Grade XII examinations was taken earlier in May during a high-level virtual meeting, chaired by India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in the presence of the country’s Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal. However, hashtags such as #CancelBoardExams and #ModijiSave12thStudents have strongly influenced whether to rethink that decision.

Speaking to UAE newspaper, Khaleej Times, Thomas Sam, a Sharjah-based parent of a Grade XII candidate, said, “I see my son studying all the time and I feel this has been going on forever now.

“On Monday, he took an online engineering entrance examination for the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Tamil Nadu, India. But all plans are still up in the air. There’s no closure. Grade XII candidates this year are perpetually on the edge. They can’t seem to enjoy their downtime. The Indian government needs to take a firm decision.”

The sibling of a UAE-based Grade XII candidate, Olivia Mathew, told the paper, “… it feels like a never-ending loop. My brother’s one set of school examinations gets over and then I see him preparing for the next one. The candidates don’t even know the marks of which examinations will be tabulated for the final assessment. So, they have to take each examination as seriously as the other because of an utter lack of priority. It’s difficult to keep pace with the goings-on and most of which is beyond a candidate’s control…

“My brother is exhausted.”