The National Examination Board on Saturday decided to postpone the final examination of grade 12 after the resurgence of Covid-19 cases across the country.

A meeting of the board decided to postpone nation-wide examinations of grade 12 until further notice.

“The board decided at today's meeting to postpone the examination of grade 12 due to the surge of Covid-19 cases,” Jung Bahadur Aryal, spokesperson at the board, told the Post. “The board will conduct the examination after the situation becomes favorable. It will provide information about the re-examination 15 days beforehand.”

Aryal said there were no discussions held at the meeting on alternative methods for the examination.

The exams were scheduled to start from August 15 in the physical presence of students. However, after the spike in Covid-19 cases, the Ministry of Health and Population on Friday had recommended the Covid-19 Crisis Management Center (CCMC) and the Ministry of Education to immediately halt all examinations, including grade 12.

The country has been recording more than 3,000 new infections every day in polymerase chain reaction tests and antigen tests for the past several days.

On Saturday 3,218 new coronavirus cases were reported and 987 people tested positive in a total of 4,707 antigen tests, according to the Health Ministry.

On Friday the death toll from Covid-19 crossed the 10,000 mark and on Saturday stood at 10,038 with 19 more deaths reported.

There had also been demands by students not to hold examinations in the physical presence of students.

Thousands of students have turned to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to express their dissatisfaction over exams in physical presence and had been pressuring the government and concerned authorities to either cancel, postpone or find alternative ways to conduct examinations.

There are 374,000 students appearing for the grade 12 exam this year.

“The meeting also published the SEE examination results on Saturday,” said Aryal.

Like last year the Secondary Education Examination of grade 10 was based on internal assessment by respective schools.