College plea to defer 1st semester internal exam: Less time to study, says Principal
Telegraph | 4 January 2025
Asutosh College has appealed to Calcutta University to defer the first-semester internal examination because students who got admitted late did not have enough time to prepare.
Some other colleges have also expressed concern about the lack of preparation time because of late admissions.
The exams are scheduled to start on January 15.
Manas Kabi, the principal of Asutosh College, has written to the CU registrar requesting him to defer the exam to the end of February.
The principal has written that many students were admitted in November because of the extended admission process following the education department’s decision to fill the vacant undergraduate seats.
“As a result, some students missed classes on a significant portion of the syllabus due to the delayed admission. Conducting the examinations as per the notified schedule may compromise the academic performance of the students.... Therefore I request you to consider extending the examination timeline up to February 28,” the principal wrote in his letter last week.
Others shared Asutosh College’s concern.
Siuli Sarkar, the principal of Lady Brabourne College, said they, too, want the exam to be deferred because the students who were admitted late had yet to cover the syllabus.
Indranil Kar, the principal of Surendranath College, said students who enrolled late would face problems writing the examination from January 15.
“I would speak to the controller of examinations on the appeal to defer the exams,” said CU registrar Debasish Das.
After the internal test, the undergraduate students will write the end-semester examination, likely to be held in March.
Several seats remained vacant in government and government-aided colleges in October after the institutes conducted independent counselling, which had to be held because not all slots were filled during the centralised counselling conducted by the education department.
Classes for those who were admitted through centralised counselling started in August.
In November, the state government allowed institutes to conduct independent counselling because around 40 to 50 per cent of the seats in several colleges remained vacant.
The principal of Asutosh College said they were worried about how the students who were admitted late would write the internal examination.
The education department had asked colleges to start the first leg of the independent counselling on September 7 as over 4 lakh of the 9 lakh seats remained vacant after the centralised counselling, which started on June 24, more than one-and-a-half months after the publication of the plus-II results.
“Those admitted in the first round of independent counselling have yet to complete their syllabus. We had to admit students again in November. How will they write the internal examination (if it starts on January 15)? The academic sub-committee of the college met and decided to write to the university,” Kabi told Metro.
The letter signed by the principal says: “This additional time would allow us to complete the syllabus effectively and ensure that all students are adequately prepared for the examination.”
The Lady Brabourne principal said: “Many students took admission during the centralised admission. After they found seats in the coveted subjects vacant in other colleges and the government allowed fresh admissions, they shifted. These students are not yet ready to write the internal exam.”