The Kerala Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examinations to be held from March 6 in 2019 has been postponed by a few days.
The Department of Public Instruction decided to postpone the examination by a week to compensate the loss of working days due to the Nipah virus and rains.The DPI has submitted it's recommendations to the government too.
The exams that were scheduled to begin on March 6, 2019, will instead begin on March 13, 2018 and go on till March 27, 2018.
Earlier, an official at the Kerala Education Minister's office had told TNM, "At the moment, we have not confirmed the decision to postpone the exams. We are just thinking about it. Because in most of the districts of the state, many schools are still being used as relief centres . Many schools in Kuttanadu are still closed. So we are trying to see if we can get at least 200 working days."
The suggestion to postpone the exams to April was not accepted by the School Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) monitoring committee. It was then decided that the exam needs to be postponed only by a few days in March itself.
Because of the rains, schools have been closed for an extended period of time in the affected districts.
This prompted the committee to mull the postponement of the exams.
Kozhikode district of Kerala was hit by the Nipah virus during the months of May and June leading to the deaths over 17 persons.
Following the discovery of the virus, the people of Kozhikode district were asked to stay in their homes to prevent people from catching the virus.
The outbreak of the virus happened at a time when schools were supposed to reopen for a new academic year. Because of its outbreak, the reopening of the schools were postponed which lead to a number of working days being lost.
Following the virus, Kerala was hit hard by rains causing serious damages to human life and property across the state.
Around 90 people have lost their lives in Kerala since the onset of monsoon in May. Extensive damage to property have also been recorded in districts like Kollam, Alappuzha, Thiruvananthapuram, Kannur, Kasargod, Ernakulam, Pathanamthitta and Kozhikkode.
Dams are reaching their full reservoir levels due to the heavu rainfall in the catchment areas. Idukki dam, which was not opened in the last 26 years, is inching towards full capacity, with orange alert issued in the district.
The Kerala government declared Kollam and Alappuzha districts as ‘flood-hit’ and allocated Rs 19.92 crores and Rs 1.16 crores respectively as relief packages. The total amount allocated by the state government for relief activities across the state for June and July stood at Rs 63.05 crores.