Despite opposition, the Maharashtra Board on Thursday has decided to conduct SSC and HSC board examinations offline, and it seems firm this time.
At a press conference held today, the Board officials, while announcing the decision, assured that safety measures would be taken, including mandatory vaccinations, student limitations in classrooms, and medical support at exam centers.
Parents have not taken too kindly to the turn of events. Ursula Joy, a mother of a 10th-std student, said, "Children are not yet ready for the offline board examination. All this while they have been studying and attending lectures online. How can they suddenly jump into offline examinations? They need a proper amount of time to prepare. There is a huge difference between online and offline examinations."
Students don’t want offline exams too. "I don't know how to study for the upcoming board examination. I feel extremely depressed. I have not finished studying anything for the examination in the hopes that it might be online and there will be a bit of relief regarding the pattern. At the current moment, I hope nothing but the postponement of the examination, if not cancellation," said Rutik Devkate.
Teachers, on the other hand, are quite at peace with the decision to conduct exams offline.
"I think that the board exams being conducted offline is a positive and logical decision by the government. There is no doubt that the government is bearing in mind all the safety precautions for the students. So, the students need not worry about that. The only reason the students want the examinations to be online is so that they can complete their papers easily," said a 10th-grade teacher, Sadhana Deshmane who teaches at St Therese Convent School.
Free Press Journal spoke to many more teachers and students and realised there was a clear division in the way the upcoming exams were being viewed. The offline versus online cry is only getting louder by the day. Though the Board’s decision seems to be final, it will take immense conditioning on part of the students to gear for the traditional offline exams after months of learning online.
