To hold exams or not: It isn’t an easily answerable question

livemint.com:

The Supreme Court issued an interim stay on a Karnataka high court order which had allowed ‘board examinations’ to be conducted for classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 in schools in Karnataka. It also said that for the examinations that had already been conducted, the results may not be communicated to anyone at all. However, some of the results had already been announced before the Supreme Court issued its order.

Earlier, because of the high court’s order and then the stay on it, school examinations had been rescheduled. All this has naturally caused public confusion and angst, not least among students and their parents. Why would the country’s apex court get involved in whether examinations can be conducted or not in schools? A bit of history will throw some light.

The Karnataka state government decided last year that annual examinations will be conducted for the four classes mentioned earlier. A representative body of some private schools filed a suit in the Karnataka high court, requesting that these exams not be allowed. The high court put a stop to the exams, but a review by a bench of the same high court stayed that order, allowing them to be conducted.

The litigants went to the Supreme Court and got the interim stay order. What are the reasons behind litigants not wanting examinations to be conducted? Let us not speculate on that. But the basis of their legal argument can be examined.