Exams in summers: an ordeal or adventure

Our students deserve all the accolades because of the circumstances, ordeals indeed, they go through to pursue their academic dreams. We make them experience all the discomfort - or adventures, as per some Pollyannas - of practical life. I felt like prolonging the prologue to the length of an elegy on the pain, anguish and agony they face in their student life, but the gravity of the issue pulled me back. The circumstances that threw me into the melancholic abyss are related to the ongoing exams for higher secondary education in Punjab. Remember that after completing this level of education, the students pursue their professional studies in arts, medicine, engineering or technology.

Sweltering heat, peak power loadshedding, insufficient facilities, a student-unfriendly environment at the examination halls and poor real-life planning are a few inhibitors that turn the exams into a ring of fire that students have to squeeze themselves through to be declared an educated community in whose hands lies the future of our country.

First of all, the academic calendar for the higher secondary classes must end in spring and examinations must be held in March. The weather during this part of the year is most suitable for studies and students. Even if educational institutions are occupied with the teaching of remaining classes in the morning, their space, which remains unoccupied after regular working hours, can be utilised for exams in pleasant weather.

To hold exams after school time will also solve the problem of scarcity of supervisory staff, consisting mostly of teachers who would be readily available in the evening after paying their teaching duties in the morning at their respective institutions. Another solution is that the examination boards can even book marriage halls to hold examinations to make the most of favourable weather in March and April.

If at all it is inevitable to hold exams for higher secondary classes in the dog days of summer because of the length of the academic year and the queued exams of other education levels, then there must be some interdepartmental communication and coordination between the education department and the electric power suppliers at the local level. The exam date sheet must be shared with the power suppliers to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity during exam hours. Imagine the suffocating milieu when the electricity goes off in long, big halls filled to the capacity with poor ventilation, dim light, faulty fans, a shortage of cool potable water and no alternative source of electricity in hot and humid days. Lo and behold, our students are initiated into practical life, a bit too early. The majority of students get panicked. Don't say the students hailing from underprivileged communities stand privileged here because such circumstances are not unseen for them. The age bracket they fall into must still be considered a tender age.

As the exam centres are usually government educational institutions, the dearth of facilities there shocks students, particularly the students from moderate to high-end elite institutions. Imagine, yes, again, how would a student who spends most of his time in spaces with an uninterrupted power supply deal with the absence of such facilities? We can't slight them as luxuries when we try and gauge their gravity at the crucial juncture of his academic sojourn.

One may argue that talking of such facilities is crying for the moon, given the poor availability of the necessities of life to all and sundry. Nevertheless, to reposition exams to the part of the academic year supporting exam-friendly weather falls in our ambit. One wonders why private educational institutions, particularly the elite ones, are not used as exam venues where the availability of facilities is much better than that at the public educational institutions. The exam boards must allocate funds to facilitate the exam centres to arrange alternative sources of power supply like solar power, UPS or portable electricity generators. Also, the funds specified under the head of ice for cool water must be enhanced proportionately, as the reckoning of the funds isn't based on the actual cost.