Today, the Supreme Court agrees to hear a plea challenging to conduct board exams for the students of classes 5 and 8. The petition has been moved by am associations of unaided private schools against the order passed by a division bench of the Karnataka High Court  which allowed the holding of the board exams by staying an order of the single bench which quashed the State Government circulars prescribing the board exams for Class 5 and Class 8.

Earlier, Private schools of the state filed a petition seeking to quash the government orders to mandate the board exams, citing that it would pressurise and cause tension among students. The petitioners also argued that the government order was passed without mentioning it in the prospectus of the academic year.

"Let's not interfere with that...the High Courts know what is best in that State", CJI DY Chandrachud told the lawyer.

"We are representing nearly 4000 schools. The learned single judge by a very reasoned order quashed the government circulars", the lawyer replied.

"That's alright. We will hear you on merits on the 27th. Let there be no uncertainty. We will hear you on the 27th", CJI told the lawyer. Though the lawyer persuaded again, CJI stuck to his stand that the matter will be listed only on March 27th.

Last week, the single bench of Justice Pradeep Singh Yerur upheld the petition and struck down the government circular that mandated board exams for Classes 5 and 8. Later, the state government filed a petition to refer a case to the division bench. 

“The idea of the examination is to assess the student’s learning level and is clearly not to retain the students. The examination will consist of questions based on the textbooks only. We will start giving wide publicity to students about the board examination from tomorrow (Thursday),” the Commissioner of the Department said.