West Bengal government has decided to promote all students from class 1 to class 8 without any examination. Talking about the latest development, Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said that no students would be detained in these classes

Indian Express reports the Minister said to on Thursday, “The department is passing on instruction to the schools (state-run and state-aided) to fully enforce the ‘no detention’ policy in all institutions for those studying up to the eighth standard, in view of the present situation.”

The minister also added that for class 9th to class 12th, a mechanism is being devised to ensure that classes are being held “with the help of technology (net), mail and through video conferencing.” He added, “We want to ensure classes can be held through modern technology. We are working on the mechanism. We will roll it out after getting the consent of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,”

West Bengal is the latest state board to forgo the exams for class 1 to 8. CBSE on April 1st had gone with option of forgoing exams for multiple classes. The country has put on lockdown to combat the spreading of COVID-19 which was declared a pandemic by WHO and thus all the schools have remained shut since at least March 24th.

In India, the Union health ministry informed on Thursday that there have been 2,069 cases of COVID-19 so far, and 53 of these people have died. More than a million cases of coronavirus have been registered globally including 52,973 deaths, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University.