KATHMANDU: The National Examination Board (NEB) has reiterated that Secondary Education Examination (SEE) is mandatory in the present context as students cannot be promoted to upper grade on the basis of the internal assessments the schools had made before.
Speaking at a video conference organized by Education Journalist Network (EJON) Nepal, NEB Chair Prof. Dr. Chandra Mani Poudel made it clear that prevalent provisions in the Education Act have made SEE mandatory.
“We have to abide by the prevalent legal provisions, we can not defy them,” NEB Chair Poudel said, “We are the authority to work as per the prevalent regulations, we will conduct exam as provisioned.”
Assuring the prospective examinees, he said that they will get at least two weeks’ time for preparation and journey to the examination center. However, he refused to tell when there exam would be conducted.
“Although the situation seems under control in some places, it may go worse again, hence it’s difficult to tell the date of exam,” Poudel said.
He added, “However, the students need not panic they will be given at least two weeks for preparation and reaching at the exam centers.”
Poudel further stated that the Board is working on various modalities like conducting the exam phase-wise or adding more exam centers at the convenient places for the students etc.
Earlier, NEB had allocated 1995 centers for the exam. A recent study had shown that 727 more centers were required provided the exam was conducted maintaining social distance in the exam hall.
In the meantime, Deepak Sharma, the spokesperson at the Ministry for Education, Science and Technology, said that although internal discussion on how to resume classes and the exam was going on, the Ministry has not reached to any conclusion till date.
“Various discussions on the modality of exams and resuming the schools and colleges are taking place, however, owing to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic we have not reached at any conclusion till now,” Spokesperson Sharma said.
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