Give 15 extra minutes/hour to students giving offline exams, minister tells varsities

In a meeting held online with vice-chancellors of various state universities on Wednesday, minister suggested that universities should give 15 extra minutes for every hour of the exam to every student

Mumbai Days after the University of Mumbai directed autonomous colleges to give extra time to students appearing for their exams in offline mode, state minister for higher and technical education Uday Samant has called for a similar concession to all students.

Depending on the total marks for theory exams--80 marks or 100 marks, students are allotted two-and-a-half or three hours respectively (HT PHOTO)

In a meeting held online with vice-chancellors of various state universities on Wednesday, Samant suggested that universities should give 15 extra minutes for every hour of the exam to every student appearing for offline exams, considering the fact that they are writing a physical exam after nearly two years.

“Covid forced education to the online platform and exams too were being conducted online. Considering that after a break of two years, students will be appearing for exams in offline mode, universities should give 15 extra minutes for every hour of the exam period to students,” said Samant in a tweet shared on Wednesday.

Depending on the total marks for theory exams--80 marks or 100 marks, students are allotted two-and-a-half or three hours respectively. Those appearing for 80 marks theory papers will get 30 minutes extra, whereas those appearing for 100 marks papers will be allotted 45 minutes extra to complete their paper.

In February this year, MU released a circular stating that summer 2022 exams will be held both online and offline. All UG exams for commerce, arts and science session 2 (regular) and backlog exams for the same batches will be conducted offline. However, backlog exams (ATKT) for semesters 1, 3 and 5, as well as semester 4 exams for regular and backlog students will be conducted online.

In the first week of March, MU released another statement confirming that semester 6 exams for traditional (aided and unaided) courses will be conducted online this year, whereas those for professional courses will be held offline.

Members of Yuva Sena, the student wing of Shiv Sena, have been raising this query with the government and respective state universities for some time now. Last month, they approached MU asking the varsity to direct autonomous colleges to give extra time to their students as several autonomous colleges had decided to conduct all exams in offline mode only. A circular to this effect was released on March 26.

On Wednesday, MU released another circular highlighting that extra time will be allotted to all MU students in the upcoming exams session. “This concession, however, is applicable to the current exam session (April-May 2022) only,” states the MU circular.

While student groups are happy with this move, college principals feel this will be too much extra time. “Due to lack of writing practice over the last two years, students are anyway struggling to continue writing for 2+2.5 hours. Giving them extra time might not be the solution for this problem, but we will do as the varsity says,” said the principal of a Mumbai college.