Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education’s plans to conduct centralised exams for Class 9 would be scrapped and responsibility would remain with the schools. Ms Banerjee also announced the decision to set up a university at Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas exclusively for women students.
“Some media organisations described the Class 9 board exams as mini madhyamik creating unnecessary apprehensions in the minds of the students. The board need not set the questions papers for Class 9. The schools will continue to conduct the exams on their own,” she added. Ms Banerjee was speaking at a Teacher’s Day programme at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
Elaborating the reason for her decision, she said that there was no need for creating additional pressure on the students. “They must be mentally relieved,” she added. The board had earlier planned to conduct centralised tests for Class 9 to prepare the students for the Madhyamik exams. However, on Tuesday, administrator of the board Kalyanmoy Ganguly announced that the centralised tests had to be deferred this year because several madhyamik schools were not ready for the new system. But on Wednesday, the chief minister made it clear that it was being scrapped.
Ms Banerjee advocated lowering the burden of books on young children. “The weight of the school bag on the delicate back of a five year child is enormous. There is urgent need to reduce the weight of syllabus,” she added.
On this occasion, she released a text books based on new curriculum for Classes 1, 2 and 5 to give new direction to school education. Displaying the new Class 1 book Amra Boi, Ms Banerjee said: “This is an all-inclusive book. Now a Class 1 child will carry just this one book in his bag instead of carrying several books. This book contains all subjects. This will greatly reduce the burden of syllabus and more importantly tension of a child,” she added.