Civil Servants to Oversee Grade 12 Exams as Teachers Continue Protests

Amid the on-going teachers’ protest and their subsequent refusal to cooperate with the National Examination Board (NEB) to conduct Grade 12 examination, the fear that the examination could be pushed back or even postponed to new date has final been resolved.

Today, the NEB in an emergency board meeting announced that the Grade 12 exams, scheduled to begin on April 24, will not be postponed. NEB Chairperson Mr. Mahashram Sharma confirmed that the exams will proceed as planned, despite ongoing protests by teachers and staff and the recent resignation of Education Minister Bidya Bhattarai. The board has directed all district-level examination coordination committees to ensure that designated exam centres are prepared to conduct the examinations smoothly.

This year, it is estimated that about 5 lakhs and 11 thousand examinees are appearing in the Grade 12 examination across 1,591 exam centres, including one in Japan. The teacher body, which has been agitating for almost a month, has refused to participate in any orientation/training that the NEB usually conducts to run the exams smoothly.

That’s why the NEB has given a green signal to conduct the examination, even if it means mobilising civil servants, the controller of examination told. The controller further told that the NEB decided to conduct the examination by giving the responsibility to the District Examination Coordination Committee in each district under the coordination of the Chief District Officer. He also reported that Teachers who did not participate in the protest will be appointed as centre heads and assistant centre heads at the examination centres, and the Chief District Officer will make a decision and manage the examinations in centres where such a situation does not exist. It has been reported that the board has made preparations to deploy the centre heads and assistant centre heads for the examination, and around 2,000 employees, at least one office assistant at each examination centre, and 20,000 security personnel based on the number of students. The NEB has asked for cooperation from each responsible individual to ensure peace and security so that students may fearlessly appear in the examination.