Karnataka HC bench upholds govt decision to conduct board exams for Classes 5, 8, 9 and 11

BENGALURU: In a major relief for students and parents, a division bench of the Karnataka High Court has upheld the state government’s decision to conduct summative assessment -2 (SA-2)/board exams for Classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 while striking down a single-judge bench order.

After a lengthy hearing, the division bench of Justices K Somashekar and Rajesh Rai K also directed the government to take necessary steps to conduct board-level exams for the remaining papers which are likely to resume from Monday. The Primary Education Department is expected to issue an order on the exam dates soon. While two exams have been completed for Classes 5, 8 and 9, all exams have been completed for Class 11.

The state government had challenged the order of the single-judge bench of the high court, which, on March 6, had quashed a government notification on conducting state-level board examinations for students of Classes 5, 8 9 and 11. The court, which was hearing a petition filed by private school managements, upheld their arguments and noted that examinations for these classes should be conducted at the school level itself as was being done earlier.

In the petition, the private school managements contended that the notification applies to only government schools and the public examinations are not part of the curriculum. The government had said that the question papers would be prepared based on the learning recovery (Kalika Chetarike) programme and students of private schools would find it difficult as the curriculum followed in private and government schools are different. The associations had also pleaded that public examinations for the above-mentioned classes should not be conducted.

The lawyers for the government argued that the learning recovery (Kalika Chetarike) programme was also part of the curriculum and is based on the regular syllabus. The programme has been designed to improve learning among children and the question papers will not have questions from outside the syllabus, they argued.