Big Announcement By HRD Ministry On Forthcoming Entrance Exams

New Delhi: The Human Resource Development Ministry on Monday announced that the entrance exams to different technical education courses that were postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the imposed lockdown to prevent transmission, will now be held after the lockdown ends. However, no dates have yet been announced for conducting entrance tests for different courses for medical, engineering, management, and other streams. Even the exams conducted by the Union Public Services Commission have not been held due to the nationwide lockdown.

HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank' said on Monday that exams like Joint Entrance Examination and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and management courses will be held only when the situation normalises.

Pointing out that the entrance exams for technical courses have only been postponed, the Minister appealed to the students not to panic in the given situation but rather utilise the time they have gained due to the lockdown to prepare well for the coming exams.

He pointed out that study material had been made available online for the benefit of students across the country.

The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has announced that it will undertake periodic review of the dates for the possible conduct of UPSC exams, which require candidates to travel across the country during normal times, keeping in mind the social distancing and other norms.

Combined Higher Secondary Level Examination (Tier I) 2019, Junior Engineers (Paper I) Examination 2019, Stenographer Grade C and D Examination 2019, and Combined Higher Secondary Level Examination 2018 skill testing will be conducted once the lockdown ends on May 3, 2020.

The conduct of all examinations across the country was stopped after the nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 24 midnight.

The HRD Ministry has said that the candidates would be intimated 10 days in advance before the conduct of the remaining board examinations of Class X and XII.

Moreover, the HRD minister interacted with parents and students across the country through a webinar on Monday and answered various questions on the circumstances arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The webinar connected about 20,000 parents from Jammu & Kashmir to Kerala and from Guwahati to Gujarat.

The Union HRD minister, through his webinar interaction, informed all the parents about various campaigns and schemes for online education being run by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. He said that the ministry was concerned about the educational activities of the students.

"For this reason, we implemented the various existing schemes on a war footing. The country's 33 crore students can take advantage of this anytime and anywhere," he said.

Thanking the parents across the country, the Union minister said, "The country is going through an unprecedented crisis at this time. This time becomes even more difficult for the parents as they must be worried about their children's education and future."

He assured all the parents that the Ministry of Human Resource Development is fully committed to the education of students and their future. He said, "In this direction, the Ministry is trying to continue the education of all students through the Diksha portal, e-Pathshala, National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER), and Swayamprabha DTH channels, etc."

Pokhriyal said "in order to strengthen the online education policy, we have launched the Bharat Padhe Online campaign in which suggestions were sought from students, parents and teachers from across the country. We have received more than 10,000 suggestions on which the Ministry would soon come up with guidelines."

(With IANS Inputs)