Students to get option of appearing in 10th, 12th board exams twice from 2025-26: Pradhan
Raipur (PTI): Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said students will get an option of appearing for 10th and 12th class board examinations twice a year from the academic session 2025-26.
One of the objectives of the new National Education Policy (NEP), unveiled in 2020, is to reduce the academic stress on students, Pradhan said on Monday after launching the PM SHRI (Prime Minister Schools for Rising India) scheme in Chhattisgarh under which 211 schools of the state will be upgraded.
The function was held at the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay auditorium in Raipur.
Highlighting the concept of introducing 10 bag-less days in school every year, the minister stressed on engaging students with art, culture and sports, among other activities.
On the Centre's plan under the NEP 2020, Pradhan said from the 2025-26 academic session, students will get an opportunity to appear for the 10th and 12th class board exams twice.
According to the New Curriculum Framework (NCF) announced by the Ministry of Education in August last year, board examinations will be held at least twice a year to ensure students have enough time and opportunity to perform well. They will also get the option to retain the best score.
Pradhan asked students present at the function if they were happy with the decision, and told them to keep the best marks obtained after appearing in both the exams.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji's vision through the NEP is to keep students stress-free, enrich them with quality education, keep students linked with culture and prepare them for the future. This is the formula for making India a developed country by 2047," he said.
Pradhan slammed the previous Congress government in the state, saying education was not its priority, but the key sector has received utmost importance after the BJP came to power and new Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai assumed office in December last year.
In the first phase of the PM SHRI scheme, 211 schools (193 elementary level and 18 secondary ones) will be upgraded in Chhattisgarh on a 'hub and spoke' model by spending Rs 2 crore on each of them, the Union minister said.
Under the model, the mentor institution, called the 'hub', will be centralised and have the responsibility of guiding the mentee institution through the secondary branches, the 'spoke', via services provided to the mentee for self-improvement.
As per a request made by Chhattisgarh's School and Higher Education Minister Brijmohan Agrawal, more secondary and higher secondary schools will be covered under the scheme in its next phase, Pradhan said.
He said India will bid to host the 2036 Olympics Games and he expects that 10 per cent of medals for the country in the quadrennial event should come from Chhattisgarh athletes and preparations for it should start from this year itself.
Chief Minister Sai, minister Agrawal and other senior officials were present at the function.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
