Tamil Nadu School Education Minister has announced that the 12th Boards Examination will be held offline. The duration will be the same as that it was before which is of 03 hours. It was speculated that the Tamil Nadu 12th Boards Exam will be held online due to the number of COVID-19 Tamil Nadu state has recorded for the past few days. Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, Education Minister of Tamil Nady, has said that the offline exam will take place only after there is a decrease in Coronavirus cases.
On Friday, May 28, 2021, Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi reiterated that students of the state board examination will have to appear for the examination centre physically. The Tamil Nadu 12th Boards examination will be conducted offline at different test centres across the state. The exam schedule will be released online after the Health Department reports a decrease in the number of COVID-19 cases.
The announcement was made while he was speaking to reporters after inspecting mass vaccination drives taking place in different places by the Trichy district administration. Education Minister has said that “Like the future of the students, their health is also important for us. We will take an appropriate call when the health department reports a decline in positive cases”. When asked about streamlining online education he said that the guidelines might be ready in a week as a new committee has already been set up.
A few days before, on May 23, 2021, Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank held a big meeting on the 12th Boards examination. The meeting was joined by Defence Minister Shri Raj Nath Singh, Smt. Smriti Irani and Shri Prakash Javdekar. After the meeting, the Centre has asked states to conduct the Boards examination.
Two options were suggested to the State Boards to organize the examination. The first option is to hold the examination in the upcoming three months. The first month will be for pre-board activities. The remaining two months will be for Boards examination and result declaration. The examination will only be organized for major subjects. The marks for minor subjects will be given on the basis of major subjects performance.
The second option was to organize the Boards exam for 90 minutes instead of 03 hours. As per this option, candidates have to appear for one language exam and three elective subjects only. However, several state boards do not find the 90 minutes examination notion suitable. Tamil Nadu State Board has said that the examination will be organized for 03 hours. Haryana state has also said that if a candidate is appearing for the exam at the designated exam centre then there is no point in decrease the duration of the exam.