CBSE exam schedule has NEET aspirants worried

Charu Chhibber

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 9

The date sheet for the Class X and XII exams was announced by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) here today. The exams will be conducted from March 9 in view of the elections in five states — Punjab, Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

The CBSE exams for Class X will continue till April 10 while the Class XII exams will end on April 29.

The delay of one week in the exams has left aspirants of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) worried.

“NEET is scheduled for May 7, 2017, and the last non-medical exam of chemistry is on March 25. It leaves little time for the aspirants to prepare for the test. I’m worried as to how my daughter will prepare for the test,” said Prerna Singh Chahal, a mother of two.

Nitasha Sharma, a Class XII student, shared Chahal’s views. She said her score in NEET would be affected as she would get little time to prepare for the exam.

In a release, the CBSE has said it has “made all possible efforts to maintain a reasonable time gap between major papers and to ensure that the students appearing for the Joint Engineering Exam (JEE) and NEET complete the CBSE examinations ahead of these entrance exams.

The board has also clarified that the exam result will be declared on time as the CBSE has adopted several IT initiatives, which will aid in faster result processing. Meanwhile, uncertainly continues to haunt students of the ICSE and the ISC as the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, that conducts the exams, is yet to announce the rescheduled date sheet. It may take up to 15 days, said sources. The CISCE had announced its date sheet for the Class X and Class XII examinations on December 1, but after the Assembly election dates for various states were announced by the Election Commission recently, the exams will be rescheduled. The ISC exams were scheduled to start on February 6 and the ICSE exams from February 27.