West Bengal will defer next year’s Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examinations because teachers are expected to be deployed for population census duties, state school education minister Dipak Barman said on Wednesday. The revised schedule will be announced next week, with Higher Secondary examinations planned after Madhyamik and the results expected to be published on time.
“The census will continue till February 28, and the board exams will be held after it. The exams will have to be deferred,” Barman said. He added that the revised dates would not clash with all-India examinations.
The state secondary education board had earlier announced that Madhyamik examinations would begin on February 15 and end on March 2. The Higher Secondary council had said its examinations would be held after Madhyamik, but had not yet released a detailed schedule.
According to an education department official, the secondary education board proposed shifting the examinations from March 2 to March 16 after recognising that teachers would be needed for census-related work as well as examination duties. The official said the proposed dates were being examined and that the final schedule would be issued after discussions with the state administration.
The census is being conducted in two phases. House-listing and the housing census are scheduled between April and September this year, followed by population enumeration and caste enumeration. In West Bengal and several other parts of the country, the second phase is scheduled to run from January 25 to February 28.
The scheduling problem comes as schools continue to operate with a reported shortage of teachers. Education department sources said recruitment had not taken place since 2016, leaving the examination authorities with a limited pool of teachers who can be assigned to invigilation and other examination-related responsibilities.
The staffing gap has also been aggravated by the deployment of teachers for election-related duties during the special intensive revision process, the report said. The state is facing a stalled recruitment process involving 23,514 secondary-level teachers for Classes IX and X and 12,514 higher-secondary teachers for Classes XI and XII.
A School Service Commission official said recruitment would begin after publication of a revised merit list based on a 7 per cent OBC reservation. The recruitment process had remained stalled amid changes to the reservation framework.
For students, the immediate change is a delay in the examination calendar rather than a change to the stated result timeline. The education minister said the revised schedule would be released next week after the state administration completes its discussions.
