No Grace Mark for SSLC 2021 Exam in Kerala: Report

Kerala State government recently announced that no grace marks have been awarded to any student while curating the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) or Class 10 examination 2021. In fact, the same policy has also been implemented in the case of Class 12 state board exams. Based entirely on the performance of students in the internal assessment and theory exams, the state education board shall be announcing the Class 10 results on the official website keralaresults.nic.in. While the government previously did consider the possibility of awarding grace marks to students, the idea was dropped later.

The Kerala state government usually awards grace marks to deserving students based on their performance in extracurricular activities. These activities comprise art festivals, science fairs, math fairs, work experience fairs, NSS, NCC, etc. About two lakh students were to benefit from grace marks based on active participation in such non-academic activities. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no such activities took place during the academic year. Hence, there was no other contention based on which the education department would have awarded these marks to students.

Before the education government’s clarification, doubts were raised about whether or not grace marks will be given to state board students. If the answer were yes, what would be the parameters to do so. However, as no fairs or events were conducted, the only reasonable thing to do was to not award grace marks to any students.

As per reports, the SSLC evaluation ended on Friday, June 25, 2021, whereas the Class 12 or Plus Two evaluation ended on June 19, 2021. The SSLC evaluation reportedly began in the first week of June 2021, around the time when the second wave of COVID-19 began to stabilise. Approximately 12,000 teachers across 7 cities participated in the SSLC assessment. Results for the same are expected to come out soon on the official website keralaresults.nic.in.

The Kerala education board is one of the few boards to conduct the Class 10 and 12 board exams in the wake of the second wave of COVID-19. While the other central and state education boards decided to cancel their board exams, Kerala was one step ahead. It had managed to finish conducting its board exams in May 2021. In fact, the Class 12 board exams were concluded on April 26, 2021, giving teachers ample time to assess the students.

Other state boards are yet to decide the evaluation methodology to assess Class 12 students, with many states going ahead with the “30-30-40” method created by CBSE. In case students have any objections with their results, they shall be given an option to appear for exams later. While CBSE is giving students this provision to improve their scores, most states are yet to take a final call.