Schools in a dilemma: To go online or postpone exams

Deepkamal Kaur

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Jalandhar, May 11

The decision of the state government to close down schools for offline classes from May 16 in view of the heatwave has affected the academic calendar of the schools, especially since examinations were to be held in the second half of this month.

While some schools have announced that they would take online examination, others have chosen to put them off to July first week when the schools would resume. There are still others who have written to the district administration seeking its intervention to allow them to conduct exams in the early hours of the day and are hence awaiting a reply before announcing any schedule to the students and parents.

Principal of Innocent Hearts School Rajeev Paliwal said: “We will definitely shut down schools from Monday onwards. But we are not changing any examination schedule. The exams will be held as per the already declared datesheet and will be taken in online mode. These are unit tests and it will not really matter much even if students take these from home”.

The authorities of St Joseph’s Convent School, Cantt Road, have announced that there would be online classes for the students for two weeks from May 16 to 30. They will have vacation till June 30 and offline examination have been postponed to July. Just ahead of the announcement of the state government to close down schools from May 16, the school had given a datesheet with exams scheduled from May 16 to 30.

MGN Public School, Urban Estate, too has decided to postpone the examination to July. Principal Jatinder Singh said: “We will close down schools from Monday onwards. For one week, our teachers will take online classes. Summer vacation will start from May 23 to June 30. Examination will be now held after the schools will re-open.”

Some schools like State Public School are yet to take a decision. President of the school management Dr Narotam Singh said: “Our principal has written to the district administration seeking that we be allowed to hold examination from 7.30 am to 10 am. By 10 am, the students will be free and can go home. There will not be much heat around that time and we will take adequate measures using power back up system and water dispensers. We will make an announcement only after we get a response from the administration”.