The Delhi Fire Services received a call about the fire at 11:40 am and four fire tenders were rushed to the college premise. The blaze was brought under control by 12:25 pm.

As stated by Zee News, at least two classrooms at the college were charred in the fire. The photographs of the scene showed huge red fireballs leaping from the window frames and a thick black smoke spiralling out. However, no one was injured in the incident, the DFS official said.

Dr. Rakesh Gupta, Principal of the College, said the fire gutted the statistics computer lab. “There were about 38-40 computers in the lab that were gutted in the fire. It was today that the lab was opened by a staffer for cleaning purposes. The fire was triggered due to a short circuit in the air-conditioner,” he was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

The fire incident took place even as all educational institutions are shut across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. As per Central Government’s Unlock 1.0 guidelines, a decision on the opening of schools, universities, colleges, coaching, and training institutions will be taken in the month of July after consultations with the respective states and Union territories. The state government or UT administrations have been advised to hold consultations at the institution level with parents and other stakeholders before taking a decision on the opening of educational institutions.

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Earlier, the registration process for admission to undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG), M.Phil., and Ph.D. courses was tentatively scheduled between June 8 and June 30. While admissions for the first cut-off list for UG courses were scheduled between August 11 and August 14. This essentially meant that the registration portal would be opened on Monday, June 8. However, a standing committee meeting of the academic council, scheduled to be held on May 29 and approve the admission process schedule as well as other decisions, was cancelled.

Arun Kumar Attree, member of the standing committee, said that the registration could not be started on June 8 as the standing committee meeting was not held earlier. “We have not been informed of when the meeting will be held next. However, we expect the registration to start in around 10 days tentatively. The registration will be in two phases: first, students can register for admission and during the second phase, they can enter their marks. A ten-day window will be given to students after CBSE results are declared and the cut-off is likely to come a week after that,” Hindustan Times reported.

“The schedule prepared earlier was only tentative because we are having an unprecedented situation and a lot of things have to be discussed before making things public,” a senior member of the DU admission committee said. The documents, to be placed before the standing committee, also mentioned that the admission process will depend on the declaration of Class 12 result by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) adding that the dates “may be modified keeping in view the situation at the time of admission due to coronavirus outbreak.”

The entrance examinations for the 12 entrance-based undergraduate courses was tentatively scheduled to take place between July 27 and August 10. “The National Testing Agency said it will conduct entrance tests for various courses in July. In an ideal scenario, the registration process should close a month before the exams so that the testing agency gets time to prepare a database, generate admit cards and even arrange for the various facilities at the 21 different centres across the country,” said the member of the admission branch, as stated by Hindustan Times.

The member further said that the meeting is likely to take place this week. “Students can access the helpline numbers mentioned on the website for any query,” the member added.

The helpline numbers for merit-based undergraduate admissions are 9650232137, 9582756236, 7290806670, while for entrance-based UG admissions, students can contact at 9149002539 and 9953634922. Admission related queries for postgraduate, M.Phil. and Ph.D. will be addressed at 9654450932, as per the official notice. The helplines will be active from 10 am to 5 pm. Students can also raise their queries via e-mail. For undergraduate admissions, students can mail at undergraduate2020@admission.du.ac.in and at pg2020@admission.du.ac.in for postgraduate programme admissions.

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Recently, the Maharashtra state has been in news for conducting university examinations. Governor of the State Bhagat Singh Koshyari announced exams after the Chief Minister cancelling all exams entirely. Earlier, educational institutes including the University of Delhi (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Manipal University, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Osmania University in Hyderabad, Gujarat Technical University (GTU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), and others have decided to go ahead with the final year examinations. While Amity University has decided to cancel all exams. The students of Karnataka, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh are demanding the same for themselves now.

Another news coming from Odisha, the Odisha government last week issued a revised order that allowed conducting examinations in schools and colleges. “Schools, colleges, other educational training coaching institutions, etc. will remain closed till 31st July 2020. However, conducting examinations shall be permitted,” an order issued by the Special Relief Commissioner was quoted as stated by Odisha’s Kalinga TV. Students took to Twitter to raise their concerns regarding attending exams in a pandemic.

Regarding the entrance examinations, over 50,000 students and doctors appearing for entrance exams at AIIMS were left concerned after the institution decided to conduct the examinations on June 11 instead of June 5. Dr. Gautam Tiwari, a doctor practicing at a private hospital in Jaipur, Rajasthan, “Scheduling the examination at a time when the COVID-19 lockdown has not yet been lifted is simply careless. It not only puts our lives in danger but also stands to endanger the community,” News18 reported.

The decision to conduct final year exams and scrap the intermediate semester exams came after the Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ established a UGC Task Force in order to frame guidelines for exams focussing on social distancing and various safety arrangements to be made.

The students have shown a lack of faith in the government and the examination authorities over the issue citing health reasons. Many say that at this time, conducting exams is not a safe step as the virus can be transmitted in public places. Students said that most of them have gone home without taking any study material with them and due to this they are not able to prepare for the examinations. Students now are also concerned about the rising number of coronavirus disease cases and their respective universities’ decision to conduct exams.

Students have also raised issues pertaining to “No vaccine No exams” in various parts of the country. There has been a petition on change.org for the exam cancellation which runs under #StudentLivesMatter. In fact, the hashtag became the top trending hashtag on Twitter with messages, videos, and memes flooding the microblogging social media site on Sunday. The campaign started taking a cue from #BlackLivesMatter has so far received responses from more than 104,000 users.

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“There will definitely have to be some rationalization of the syllabus, because there will definitely be some loss of time, even with blended schooling and home schooling,” Mr. Ahuja said during a virtual conference on ‘Future of Schools: Overcoming COVID-19 challenge and beyond’ organized by Ashoka University.

“We cannot bring sudden changes in the education system and create confusion and uncertainty. The curriculum reforms are going to be in sync with the learning outcomes. We are rationalizing the curriculum. We plan to retain the core elements, which are very necessary in terms of learning outcomes,” he added.

He further said, “If something is duplicated in some way or working extra on the same concept, we aim to shelve it, and thirdly anything which can be done in a more practical manner should be done that way. That’s what we are planning and we should be able to finalize within a month’s time,” Hindustan Times reported.

According to him, schools will also be asked to start shifting to a competency-based education system from this academic session. The Board further aims at moving away from the rote-learning, content-based, examination-focussed structure of the Indian education system while, competency-based education looks to map a child’s understanding and application of concepts rather than knowledge of facts.

While this is being considered to be applied in an incremental manner, it means that from the coming academic session, the CBSE’s Class 10 board examinations will include 20% case-based or application-based questions, which have real-life connections. There will be 10% of such questions in the Class 12 board examinations for all subjects as well.

However, the Board’s chairman emphasized that it is important for the wider ecosystem of parents, coaching institutes, higher education institutions, and job recruiters to come on board too and be willing to transform positively from a traditional mindset. He mentioned, “If getting into college or getting a job is still based on the old rote-learning, content-based model, there will be no incentive for change from the demand side. The change needs to be simultaneous,” as stated by the Hindu.

Earlier, the Union Human Resources Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ had announced in April that CBSE will be reducing the curriculum for the next year’s academic calendar for all the classes to make up for the lost time caused due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown asserting that the curriculum will be curtailed in proportion to the lost time.

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The Board grants several exemptions to children with special needs in accordance with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Ac, 2016. “In case children with special needs availing the facility of scribe do not wish to appear in the forthcoming examination because of noncompliance of social distancing norms, the students can inform their respective schools and their result will be declared as per the assessment scheme to be decided by the board,” a senior board official said, as stated by Hindustan Times.

“In addition to extra time, scribe or reader, computer or laptop (without internet), from this year, we had also allowed the use of basic calculators for candidates registered under the CWSN category,” the board official added.

The total number of students under Children With Special Needs (CWSN) categories including visually impaired, dyslexics, muscular dystrophy, locomotor impairment, dwarfism, and others, are 6,844 for class 10 and 3,718 for class 12. While the Class 12 exams will be conducted across the country, the Class 10 exams are only pending in North East Delhi, where they could not be held due to the law and order situation in the wake of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Educational institutions across the country have been closed since March 16, 2020, when the Centre announced a nation-wide classroom shutdown as part of the measures to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak.

CBSE will only conduct the pending exams in 29 subjects, which are considered crucial for promotion and admission to higher educational institutions. The Board has also decided that no pending exams will be conducted in foreign countries. However, it is yet to announce an assessment scheme for the examinations that are not being conducted for foreign students and children with special needs.

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