Bengaluru (Karnataka): The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday ordered to quash the circular issued by the state government regarding the conduct of state-level board exams for classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 of schools with state curriculum.
The previous BJP government had earlier issued a circular deciding to conduct state-level board examination instead of school-level assessment for students of classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 of state curriculum schools. The bench headed by Justice Ravi Hosmani heard the petition filed by the Union of Unaided Private Schools questioning this and announced the verdict. A detailed copy of the order is yet to be made available.
The state education department issued two circulars on October 6 and 9, 2023 under the Education Act, deciding to conduct the board-level examination. Now the board exams scheduled from March 13 to 19 stand cancelled by this order of the Karnataka High Court.
The petitioners, who challenged the circular, said, ''The Education Department's circular is applicable only to students of government schools. It is not part of the syllabus. However, the government says that it has prepared questions from the learning recovery syllabus for the board exam. The curriculum of private schools and the curriculum of government schools are different. Learning recovery curriculum questions are difficult for private school children to answer. Therefore, board-level examination should not be allowed to apply to all children."
Advocates for the government said, ''Learning recovery is also part of the curriculum. The learning recovery curriculum is prepared from the general curriculum. It is designed to positively enhance children's intelligence. There are no extra syllabus questions in the question paper. So, it is right to get questions from the learning recovery syllabus for the board exam. An opportunity should be given to conducting the examination accordingly."
Advocates KV Dhananjay and Aniruddha A Kulkarni appeared for the petitioners.
