Gujarat Class 12 students get back to campuses as board exams begin for repeat candidates

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Dahod reported the lowest attendance for Class 12 with nearly 18 per cent. Anand, Gandhinagar and Gir Somnath recorded 24, 24 and 25 per cent, respectively.

Since offline classes are optional and attendance is not compulsory, schools have to continue with online teaching as well.

“Attendance on the first day in our seven schools was around 20-25 per cent. From Monday, we are expecting this to pick up as we are in the process of getting parents consent letters,” said Muktak Kapadia, trustee of HB Kapadia Schools. HBK School Gurukul was one of the schools where teachers were teaching through both offline and online mode.

Meanwhile, some schools have decided to delay the reopening. “We have decided to start offline teaching after a few days as we did not have enough time to collect parents’ consent letters,” said DPS Bopal principal Surender Sachdeva.

On July 9, the the state government declared to partially reopen education institutes from July 15 for Class 12, higher and technical institutes with 50 per cent capacity.

The decision taken by the core committee chaired by Chief Minister Vijay Rupani applies to over 6.82 lakh students who are enrolled in 8,333 government, grant-in-aid and private higher secondary schools. It also applies to over 8.85 lakh students of 1,609 higher education institutes affiliated to universities along with 2.78 lakh students registered under different courses of engineering, pharmacy and polytechnic with 489 technical institutes in the state.

Repeat exams begin
Class 10 and 12 board exams for repeat and private candidates conducted by the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) started Thursday.

“With detailed planning and arrangements, the exams went smooth on the first day,” GSHSEB chairman AJ Shah told The Indian Express.

Class 10 exam recorded an attendance of 86 per cent where 67,629 out of 78,646 candidates appeared in the exams. Class 12 general stream (morning session) recorded 86.69 per cent with 13,870 of the total 15,999 appearing across the state. In the afternoon session, 86.43 per cent candidates appeared for the exams.

Class 12 science exam for repeat candidates recorded 92.62 per cent attendance with 27,601 of the total 29,801 appearing.

A dummy case was reported from Rajkot in Class 12 general stream exam, while one copying case was recorded from Patan. In Class 10, one copying case each from Panchmahal, Patan and Porbandar were reported.

On June 25, the Indian Express had reported about the overwhelming increase in number of applications from repeater candidates for both senior secondary and higher secondary this year. Around 5.5 lakh candidates had registered online between February 5 and March 29.

Seeing an opportunity to get the “SSC pass” certificate in the year of mass promotion amid Covid pandemic, many repeaters who could not clear Class 10 boards since the 1980s had also registered.
The GSHSEB had cancelled examinations for Class 10 and Class 12 but it is making all arrangements for holding examinations for repeater candidates from July 15 to 28 across the state.