CBSE schedule derails plan for revision classes

Hyderabad: City schools are struggling to conduct revision classes for class 10-12 students due to shortage of working days this academic year.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) advanced the board exams by nearly two weeks this year. As per the schedule released by the board, the exams will be held from February 15 this year as against March first-week conducted for the last few years.Not just that, the CBSE had also advanced the practical exams, which started on January 1 and will be held till February 7, cutting down another 15 days of revision period for students.
“For students struggling to cope up, we are calling them at 7:30am, an hour before the classes begin. Apart from this, we have rearranged our classes wherein we conduct only four periods of 90 minutes and focus on the core subjects,” said Simi Nagi, principal of Pallavi Model School, Alwal.
There are many schools which are calling students even on Sundays to conduct revision classes. Especially those who started academic session in June. Whereas, there are few others such as Delhi Public School (DPS), Nacharam, which are using technology to prepare students for the ensuing board exams.
“We are conducting live web-classes from our in-house studios wherein students can learn even by sitting at home. Teachers are available on call for an hour every evening to resolve students’ doubts apart from addressing queries on our internal student-teacher WhatsApp groups,” said Sunitha Rao, principal of DPS, Nacharam.
Adding to the misery were the number of working days that school managements in Telangana lost due to the RTC strike owing to which the state government had extended the Dasara holidays by a week. School managements rue that despite extending the number of holidays, the state government has not extended the SSC exam dates, thereby leaving them with insufficient time to conduct revision classes. As per schedule, the SSC board exams are scheduled to commence from March 19.
“Inconsistency in classes due to extended holidays has jeopardized students learning. Schools are forced to rush syllabus due to shortage of working days and are unable to conduct enough revision classes before commencement of exams,” said S Madhusudan, state general secretary of Telangana Recognised School Managements Association, adding that the government should have considered postponement of exams to March last week for this year.
Managements fear that revision classes and conducting back-to-back pre-board exams in within a tight time schedule may impact confidence and results of students.