Latest updates: Education news India; amid coronavirus pandemic

by Shatakshi Gupta

Coronavirus had halted or rather brought most of the sectors to a standstill. One of the most affected sectors being education. Governments and other statutory/autonomous bodies are continuously making announcements over exams, reopening of schools and colleges and so on.

Here are some latest updates, about exams, colleges and other educational institutions.

  • According to NDTV, the National Testing Agency, or NTA, has re-opened the application form correction window for the JEE Main 2020. Candidates who had already filled the application form for the engineering entrance exam earlier and paid the application fees can correct and modify the details in the application form till July 15. 
  • The NEET exams will be held on September 13 while the JEE Main examinations will be conducted between September 1 and September 6.
  • The JEE Advanced or IIT JEE will be held on September 27. The JEE-Advanced, which is conducted for admission to Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), was scheduled for August 23.
  • In a circular sent to higher education regulators, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has directed that teachers, researchers, non-teaching staff should be permitted and advised to work from home till July 31.
  • University Grants Commission or UGC, All India Council for Technical Education or AICTE, National Testing Agency or NTA and all other autonomous organizations which are functioning under the Department of Higher Education had directed all the colleges as well as educational institutions to remain closed till July 31.
  • On June 24, news agency PTI had reported that the revised guidelines are expected to be announced by the University Grants Commission (UGC) within a week’s time. Reports also quoted that officials are stating that exams for final year students in universities as well as the higher educational institutions which were scheduled to be held in the month of July can also be cancelled, due to the rising COVID-19 cases in the country, and also the commencement of the new session is likely to be deferred till the month of October.

Also read: Impact of Coronavirus on global education sector

  • Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (also known as AKTU) has released a notice saying that the UPSEE exam which was scheduled on August 2, 2020 has been postponed. The exam will now be held on September 20, 2020.
  • UPSEE 2020 question paper will be objective in nature except for the Drawing Aptitude test. There will be separate papers for different courses. All papers will be OMR-based.
  • Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur will announce the final results for the academic year 2019-20 after July 8, director Prof V K Tewari said.
  • The University of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, also announced work from home for teachers as well as for all the other staff till July 31, this decision came following the recent order which was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, or MHRD.
  • Delhi University, or DU, also extended the deadline for admission applications of 2020 till July 18, for undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG), MPhil and PhD courses. Earlier, the last date was till July 4. The DU registration process started on June 20, 2020.

Also read: CBSE made ‘experimental learning’ mandatory for teachers on DIKSHA portal

  • The Mizoram government has postponed the opening of schools for the 2020-21 academic session for an indefinite period as a part of the containment measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak, a minister said.
  • The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has cancelled the Chartered Accountants (CA) May/July exams 2020 in view of Coronavirus pandemic. A combined exam for both May and November session exams will be conducted in the month of November, this year.