The Supreme Court on Tuesday approved the evaluation schemes devised by the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education for the Class 12 students of the two boards for the academic year 2020-21.

The court had given the boards two weeks to come up with assessment criteria for Class 10 and 12 exams which were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After the CBSE and ISCE released their evaluation criteria, it was challenged in the top court.

The SC bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari today said that the evaluation scheme is fair and reasonable and is in the larger interest of students, according to HT.

“We will uphold scheme has formulated by Boards which are independent boards and entitled to take decisions regarding exams to be conducted by them,” the bench said, reported LiveLaw.

Parents association and students had raised various concerns with regard to CBSE and CISCE evaluation schemes shared by the respective Boards for Class 12 results.

As per a Times of India report, a joint petition was filed by 1,152 students seeking direction to the CBSE for cancellation of board’s Class 12 private compartment examination and demanded parity with regular students. The Centre argued in the court that there cannot be one uniform assessment policy for all boards including CBSE, ICSE and 32 state boards as all boards are autonomous and empowered to formulate their scheme.

On this, the bench said, “Objection was made for compartment, private and Patrachar students. The analogy of the proposed scheme cannot be applied to private, compartment or patrachar students.” The bench also noted that the present evaluation scheme allows students to take an exam between August 15 and September 15 if they are not satisfied with the Boards’ assessment.