The Central Board of Secondary Education will announce the CBSE Class 12 exam dates on June 1, government sources told NDTV. The major entrance exams for undergraduate engineering and medicine - JEE Main and NEET - will be held as well, the same sources said. While the Central Government is inclined to hold the Class 12 board exams, it has left state governments to decide on their own school boards.
Class 12 Board Exams Live Updates: CBSE Exam To Be Conducted; Dates Yet To Be Finalised
The decision was taken after a meeting between several high-ranking Union ministers, state education ministers and officials held on May 23 to decide the fate of Class 12 students whose final board exams have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Government sources told NDTV that the Joint Entrance Examination-Main (JEE Main 2021) for admission to undergraduate engineering and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG 2021) for undergraduate medicine will both be held as well. These are national-level examinations conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
CBSE Class 12 Exam Format
The CBSE exam format is likely to change into the short-format type, sources told NDTV. Two proposals had been placed before states - one was to hold exams in only a handful of "major subjects" and the second was to hold exams in schools but they would be of the objective-type only and of a much shorter duration. Delhi Government, at least, opposed both formats and urged the Centre to hold off examinations until all 1.5 crore students in the relevant age-group are vaccinated, said Delhi's Education Minister Manish Sisodia in a press conference following the meeting. All Delhi Government schools are affiliated to the CBSE. Therefore, the option given to states to decide about their own exams will not apply to Delhi this year.
The high-level meeting was attended by the Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank'; Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani; Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar; and was chaired by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
