​​​​​​​Board will announce exact exam dates soon, says Union Education Minister

Union Education Minister says CBSE will soon announce the dates after discussion with the stakeholders

Solution World Bureau

New Delhi, Dec 22: Virtually interacting with teachers across the country, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said on Tuesday that the CBSE Board examinations will not be held in February and exact dates will be announced soon.

On the question relating to Board Exam dates, Pokhriyal said that CBSE is making necessary preparations for conducting the 2021 examinations. As far as the final dates for the examinations are concerned, Board exams will not be held in the month of February and CBSE will very soon announce the dates after discussion with the stakeholders, he added.

Regarding a suggestion on providing vocational education in class IX, Pokhriyal said that there are approximately 8,583 CBSE schools that offer vocational education. He informed that that over 2,80,000 secondary schools, nearly 40,000 colleges and more than 1,000 universities are expected to provide vocational education with internship after the implementation of NEP 2020.

Responding on suggestion that teachers should be given sufficient training regarding the implementation of Competency Based Education in schools Pokhriyal informed that  Ministry of education has implemented NISHTHA programme, which is an online capacity building programme for covering all 42,00,000 elementary school teachers and school heads of the country.  This programme was conducted face to face before the pandemic. However, in its wake, this programme was contextualised to the needs of teaching and learning during the pandemic and made 100% online.

The Minister also informed that CBSE, KVS and JNV undertook a massive exercise to build online teaching capacities of their teachers as soon as the lockdown started, to ensure continuity of learning through online means, wherever possible.  In the process, CBSE has trained 4,80,000 teachers, KVS trained 15855 and JNV trained 9085 teachers all India.  Training was also imparted by NVS to teachers regarding online assessment, he added.

Pokhriyal further informed that teachers are being continuously trained for discovery based and experiential learning. The new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for School Education has also been initiated and NCERT will be expected to make changes in the textbooks in accordance with the new NCF. Areas, such as creative thinking, life skills, Indian ethos, art, and integration, etc. need to be integrated.

In a question relating to students to be made aware of the ethical values and morals, the Minister said that the NEP, recommends, students should develop their ethical and moral reasoning, including knowledge and practice of human and “Constitutional values”; gender sensitivity; fundamental duties; citizenship skills and values; knowledge of India; environmental awareness including water and resource conservation,  sanitation and hygiene; and current affairs and knowledge of critical issues facing local communities, states, the country, and the world. Following the ideals of NEP, the teachers can change the mindsets of the students and inculcate ethics & values among the students, he said.

Regarding schedule and syllabus of entrance examinations, the Minister said that the syllabus of JEE (Main) 2021 examination will remain the same as it was last year. However, in order to overcome the impact of reduction of syllabus undertaken by some Boards, the question papers for JEE (Main) 2021 will have 90 questions (30 question each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics), out of which the candidate will have to answer 75 questions (25 questions each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics), he added.