NIOS Board Exams 2021: Parents of Children with Special Needs Request Board to Promote All Students

Conducting NIOS board exams 2021 under these circumstances could be harsh especially on children with special needs, say parents. Parents of children with special needs who wrote to Dataquest said that while this pandemic has been hard for all children, it has been worse for those with special needs. While making an earnest appeal to the board of the National Institute of Open Schooling, the parents said that examinations should be canceled this year.

“My daughter has a condition. She suffers from an autism spectrum disorder. She is supposed to give NIOS Secondary examinations in June 2021. However, my earnest request to board members is to cancel the examination this year and pass the students on basis of Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA),” said Dr Sonali Dutta Sarkar who claims that the pandemic has been especially hard for her daughter.

“The pandemic has been hard for all students. Nevertheless, for students like my daughter, the effects of the lockdown and Coronavirus pandemic have been two or three times more. It has had a very irritating effect on the minds of such students and therefore there has been no concentration on studies. Also, the NIOS syllabus is extremely hard for students like my daughter. My request is to make the syllabus much easier for students with disabilities as it is very hard to make them study. Furthermore, my humble request to the board is to cancel NIOS June 2021 secondary examinations and pass students on the basis of TMA,” said Dr Sarkar.

Similar to this parent, several others have also requested the board to pass all students on the basis of TMA. “Please cancel the 10th and 12^th NIOS board exams 2021. Children with special needs do their exams with the help of scribes. How are they going to do that in this situation? Apart from that, we also can’t compel these children to wear masks, keep minimum distance and take care of themselves for three hours. Hence, as parents, it is our humble request to the board to please consider canceling the exam. We are facing a lot of problems. As a board, I’m sure you are much more knowledgeable and can understand how difficult it is to handle these children. They also were not able to concentrate through online classes. We request you to cancel the NIOS board exams 2021 and help us live with our children,” says T Kannan, a parent.

NIOS so far has maintained that a decision regarding the conduct of examinations will be taken by 20 May keeping the wellbeing of students in mind.