The National Examination Board on Monday decided to postpone the national Secondary Education Examinations of grade 10 and the final examinations for grade 12 as the coronavirus pandemic grips the entire country.

The meeting of the board Monday decided to postpone all the tests until further notice.

“The meeting concluded that it was not possible to hold the examinations amid the present crisis,” Jung Bahadur Aryal, spokesperson at the board, told the Post. “The board will reschedule the examinations in a feasible time.”

The board had already printed the question papers for the Secondary Education Examinations slated to start on May 27. As many as 517,000 students had registered for it.

With no prospect to conduct the tests last year, the government on March 18 had decided to postpone the test indefinitely when there was just one coronavirus case which had recovered.

Later, as cases grew and the country was in the four-month lockdown, the Cabinet decided not to conduct the examinations and to award certificates to students based on their school performance. Schools were authorised to prepare the marks ledgers of their students and the board prepared the results accordingly.

However, it was found that many schools inflated the marks supposedly obtained by their students. The number of students getting GPA 4 was exponentially higher than in previous years as schools got the opportunity to mark their wards. While hardly 106 students had secured GPA 4 in 2019, the number increased to 9,319 last year

Citing this as the reason, the Cabinet in January had decided that in-person tests would be held for the SEE this year while refusing to delegate the authority to provincial governments to conduct the tests. It authorised the board to conduct the examination.

In-person grade 12 examinations were, however, held last year in November after being postponed.

As for the grade 12 examinations this year, the board had decided to dispatch question papers through email and again examinations would be conducted in the physical presence of students. Some 400,000 students are eligible for grade 12 tests.

Aryal said the board has also constituted a committee led by Baikuntha Aryal, director general at the Centre of Education and Human Resource Development, to recommend other modalities for the tests if conducting in-person tests is not possible.

“Our focus would be conduct in-person tests once the situation eases,” Aryal, the spokesperson said. “However, we will have to opt for the alternative modality if such tests are not possible.”