Amid peaking COVID-19 cases in the state and the demands kept by the teachers' associations and various stakeholders to defer the board examinations, the Tamil Nadu state government has been preparing to roll out the exams for the tenth-grade students as per the schedule issued by the school education department.

The board exams for the tenth-grade students will be commencing on June 15 and would be running till June 25. With just a week ahead for the examinations, the government has issued the standard operating protocols (SOP) and guidelines for the students and teachers appearing for the examinations. According to the guidelines, the students, teachers, and staff must go through the screening every day ahead of checking in to the examination centers.

If the student who has shown symptoms of Influenza-like Illness (ILI) and hasn't tested positive for COVID-19, he/she would be allowed to write the exam in isolation, in a separate room if he/she wishes to write the exam. If a student confirmed to have contracted to the virus upon testing, he/she would be asked to stay home and the exams for such students would be deferred to another date.

For students who show a high temperature with no symptoms, they would be allotted with the room with the other students who have shown a similar level of temperature. According to the school education department, only ten students will be allowed in a classroom to write the exams with the view of having the social distancing norms in place. All the classrooms must be disinfected at regular intervals. The teachers' association has earlier said that the government would be requiring 97,000 classrooms across the state if it goes by its calculation as about 9.7 lakh students would be appearing for exams.

The guidelines have announced that all types of government, private school hostels, and welfare hostels will resume functioning from June 11 till the completion of the exams with the view of accommodating the inter and intra-district students and the government has mandated the schools to sanitize and disinfected the hostels regularly. The government has also arranged transportation facilities for the students and teachers.

According to the reports, these inter-district transportation facilities would ferry the students and teachers to their respective examination center and adding to that, the government has taken measures to arrange adequate government/private school transport to the exam and evaluation center and the government has strictly advised these transports to maintain physical distancing during the travel. 

The government has started issuing the hall-tickets for the tenth students from June 5. The state government hasn't announced its decision of demands kept by the students and teachers to conduct the exams at their current districts by avoiding the inter-district travels. A teachers' association in the state has moved to the High court to defer the exams as the students and teachers would be at risk of appearing for exams amid soaring cases of the pandemic and it has also cited that the students would require classroom revisions before appearing for exams as the underprivileged students can't able to appear for online classes. 

Along with the tenth-grade students, the pending exams for eleventh-grade students would take place on June 16 and the re-examination of class 12 students who missed the final exam on March 24th will be held on June 18.  

Also read: 'Defer class 10 board exams in TN' - demands teachers' association! Why?