CBSE students seek postponement or extra attempts of JEE Mains

It’s that time of the year again when class 12 students focus on entrance tests to various undergraduate professional courses, most of which are held over April and May every year. This year, class 12 students of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are in a fix–their exams which are scheduled to take place between April 26 and June 15 are coinciding with the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Mains) exam this year, which will be held between April and May this year.

“Our board exams are always held over a period of two months, but usually these exams are held in the month of February and March. This year due to the delay, exams are held exactly when the entrance tests are scheduled leaving us to choose between board exams and our future,” said Aniket Bhavsar, a CBSE class 12 student from Mumbai.

Since its inception, JEE Mains was always conducted once a year but in 2020, the exam was held in two sessions in order to give students a chance to better their score. Last year, NTA decided to hold JEE Mains in four sessions for the same purpose. While the February and March session was held as per schedule, the April and May sessions had to be postponed due to increasing Covid-19 cases and were finally held in July, August and September, respectively.

This year however, owing to delay in conducting class 12 board exams across state and central education boards, the exam organising authority has decided to go back to the 2020 model and conduct JEE Mains twice only. This year, the guest session of JEE Mains will be conducted between April 21 and May 4 while the second session will be conducted between May 24 and 29. The aim, said NTA, is to ensure admissions to engineering colleges is conducted in time this year without any delay.

“Even though the JEE exam follows CBSE syllabus, we will have to study class 11 syllabus as well for the test whereas for our board exams we are focusing on class 12 syllabus only. It is unfair to expect us to prepare for both exams, knowing very well how stressful both exams are individually. Most of us might have to drop out of the entrance test this year, and attempt JEE in the next academic year because of this chaos” said another student.

Most students have taken to social media to reach out to the National Testing Agency (NTA)-the exam conducting authority, as well as union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan for help in this matter. “NTA should hold another attempt for us, to be fair. It’s not our mistake that board exams face been scheduled at the same time as the entrance test,” said Gargi Pradhan, another class 12 student.