30,000 students to take class VIII exam again

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, July 28

The School Education Department today decided to re-conduct the examination of over 30,000 class VIII students in government schools who had either skipped the test or performed very poorly in the board exam held in March. This exam will be conducted in the next two weeks.

Due to the high number of absenteeism and very poor performance of students in the class VIII examination, Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema has asked the School Education Department to make all class VIII absentee and low-performing students appear in the exam that will be re-conducted.

While as many as 10,214 students of class VIII skipped the exam in all subjects, over 20,000 students appeared in one or two papers in March. But thanks to the no-detention policy under the Right to Education Act (RTE), the students were promoted to the next class.

During a meeting with the Education Minister yesterday, some teachers and district education department authorities revealed that a large number of students below class VIII were not attending school for months together.

In order that these students take the classes and exam seriously in class IX and X, the department today issued directions to re-conduct the exam for all class VIII students who skipped the exam, said Sukhchain Singh Gill, district education officer (elementary), Faridkot.

But the order to re-conduct the exam in the next two weeks has got many teachers in slum areas worried as they will have to trace the non-attending students.

Most of these absent students are children of migrant labourers and they have already shifted to other states. But under RTE, the name of any student till class VIII cannot be struck off the rolls.