Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on Tuesday made it clear that the CBSE board examinations will not be held in the month of February 2021.

Pokhriyal said CBSE will announce the dates soon after discussion with the stakeholders.

Union Education Minister Pokhriyal made the announcement while interacting virtually with the teachers across the country on upcoming competitive and board examinations.

On the question relating to board examination dates, Pokhriyal said, “Being a student-centric government, we have always worked in the interest of the students.”

“As far as the final dates for the examinations are concerned, board exams will not be held in the month of February and CBSE will very soon announce the dates after discussion with the stakeholders,” he stated.

Pokhriyal in his statement said CBSE is making necessary preparations for conducting the 2021 examinations.

Regarding schedule and syllabus of entrance examinations, the minister said the syllabus of JEE (Main) 2021 examination will remain the same as it was last year.

However, in order to overcome the impact of reduction of syllabus undertaken by some boards, the question papers for JEE (Main) 2021 will have 90 questions (30 question each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics), out of which the candidate will have to answer 75 questions (25 questions each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics), he added.

The minister expressed his gratitude to all the teachers for spreading awareness relating to COVID19 among the students and society at large.

Regarding a suggestion on providing vocational education in class IX, Pokhriyal said there are approximately 8,583 CBSE schools that offer vocational education.

He informed that over 2,80,000 secondary schools, nearly 40,000 colleges and more than 1,000 universities are expected to provide vocational education with internship after the implementation of NEP 2020.

Responding on suggestion that the teachers should be given sufficient training on the implementation of Competency-Based Education in schools, Pokhriyal said the Ministry of Education has implemented NISHTHA programme.

NISHTHA programme is an online capacity building programme for covering all 42,00,000 elementary school teachers and school heads of the country.

This programme was conducted face to face before the pandemic.

However, in its wake, this programme was contextualised to the needs of teaching and learning during the pandemic and made 100% online.

The Minister also informed that CBSE, KVS and JNV undertook a massive exercise to build online teaching capacities of their teachers as soon as the lockdown started, to ensure continuity of learning through online means, wherever possible.

In the process, CBSE has trained 4,80,000 teachers, KVS trained 15855 and JNV trained 9085 teachers all India.

Training was also imparted by NVS to teachers regarding online assessment, he added.

Pokhriyal highlighted that to make students aware of the importance of yoga, sports and meditation for mental / physical health, several initiatives are taken by the ministry.

He said CBSE partnered with FIT INDIA movement to engage students in various online live sessions of physical activities arranged for their physical wellbeing.

He informed that sports teachers of all 645 JNVs conduct live sessions and regularly give exercises and practice schedules to students for their fitness.

On the question relating to digital divide due to lack of gadgets and sufficient network, the Minister said MoE has initiated the “coherence” model under PM E – Vidya.

He said the content available online on DIKSHA is now available through SWAYAM PRABHA TV channel.

Pokhriyal said radio broadcasting is being used for children in remote areas who are not online and NCERT is producing high-quality audio/radio programs with effective media treatment such as apt music, sound effects and involvement of seasoned and refined artists of good repute in the media world.