Delayed exams to cost BEd students a year

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 6

BEd students studying in government and private colleges affiliated to Guru Nanak Dev University said that their third semester examination, which was to be held in January, has been postponed to April, leading to their loss of a full academic session in the process.

The students said that their examination was not conducted in January as Covid cases had shot up during that time. They said ever since they had been demanding that a fresh datesheet be issued which did not come till February end. Finally, they said that they got the datesheet with examination slated to be held from April 1 to 12.

The students said that usually they got four and a half month teaching practice in the third semester and course work was conducted in the fourth one. But owing to Covid, it was inter-changed so that situation could normalise by the time they would enter the fourth semester. “But it has not helped at all. Our examination of third semester got delayed. Our teaching practice would start in May or June and would continue till September or October. But in the meantime, the admission for MSc, MA or other courses will start and we will miss it. By the time we will get free from teaching practice, all admissions will be over and we will have to wait till June-July 2022 to get further admissions”, rue the students.

The students said that when they talked about the matter with their college authorities, they expressed their helplessness. They said that they even tried to contact the GNDU officials many times through email given on the portal, the message was not getting sent as it kept bouncing back.

The students have demanded that some adjustment be made by shrinking the teaching practice time or delaying the MSc and MA admissions in all universities so that they do not have to waste a precious academic year. The students are worried as Punjabi University students are already done with their third semester examination and are doing teaching practice currently and Panjab University too had allowed online examination.

Dr Manoj Kumar, Controller, Examinations, GNDU, said, “There is no point for students to get upset about. All universities are making maximum adjustments to ensure that students do not suffer any loss.”