India has a new scoring system for the COVID batch’s lost semester⁠— where old grades matter

• The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) today said that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) will roll out a new quality assessment system and accreditation for online education in India.
  
• The students in the final year of college will have to sit for exams — in July or later, if the condition worsens, the Union Minister said.
  
• On the other hand, those in the first semester will be promoted based on their internal assessment scores. Students in other semesters will be promoted based on their academic record in the previous year and internal assessment of the current semester.
  
• As many as 33 crore students are enrolled in over 45,000 colleges in India.

The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) today said that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) will roll out a new quality assessment system and accreditation for online education in India. This is aimed at promoting high quality education in the country.

The development was announced by the Union Cabinet Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal while addressing the higher education institutions. As many as 33 crore students are enrolled in over 45,000 colleges in India.

The students in the final year of college will have to sit for exams — in July or later, if the condition worsens, the Union Minister said.

On the other hand, those in the first semester will be promoted based on their internal assessment scores. Students in other semesters will be promoted based on their academic record in the previous year and internal assessment of the current semester.

This comes after the University Grants Commission (UGC) rolled out new guidelines for university students that said that these students will be giving the final examination in July and the next academic session will begin in August, 2020.

“The academic session 2020-21 may commence from August 1 for old students and September 1 for fresh students,” the official announcement said.

The UGC guidelines also mandated that the final year students will have to sit for exams — online or offline. “Universities may conduct terminal, intermediate semester examinations in offline or online mode, as per their ordinances and regulations, scheme of examinations, observing the guidelines of ‘social distancing’ and keeping in view the support system available with them and ensuring fair opportunity to all students,” UGC added.

According to the guidelines, the exams shall be conducted for a duration of two hours now instead of three hours. In addition, the universities will have to follow a six-day week pattern “to compensate the loss for the remaining 2019-20 session”.

In March, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) directed all the educational institutions — including the universities, entrance exam centres to shut down in wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since then, colleges have been trying to move the academic sessions online. Many institutes — including IIM Calcutta — have already started the next academic session online via video conferencing.

See also:
At least 7 leading multinationals are hiring data scientists during the lockdown in India

India drops six places in the ranking for world’s best startup ecosystems⁠— power outages and slow internet speeds get some of the blame