The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) secretary Anurag Tripathi said on Friday that the board will, for sure, conduct its examinations for class X and XII and a schedule is likely to be soon announced.

His remarks came amid several demands from different quarters to cancel or postpone the board examination due to the increasing cases of coronavirus.

"The board exams will happen for sure and a schedule will be announced very soon. The CBSE is making plans and will soon reveal how it will do test assessments," he said during a webinar on "New Education Policy (NEP): Brighter future of school education", which was organised by ASSOCHAM.

Tripathi, however, did not shed light on whether the exams will be conducted in the usual format and will be held in February or March, or will be postponed.

"During March-April we were flummoxed as to how to move forward, but our schools and teachers rose to the occasion and transformed, trained themselves in using new technology for teaching purposes and within a few months conducting online classes using different apps became normal," the secretary said.

Schools across the country were shut down since March to curb the spread of Covid-19 infections, and the board exams, which had to be postponed midway, were ultimately cancelled this year. The results were announced on the basis of an alternative assessment scheme as a result.

However, since October 15, some states have partially opened them with many others deciding to keep them closed in view of the spiking number of cases.

Several people have demanded the board exams be postponed to May as schools have not opened for months and teaching-learning activities have completely shifted online.

Noting that a common aim of all education policies including the new National Education Policy (NEP) has been to shift students from rote learning to experiential learning, Tripathi said, "the entire NEP 2020's thrust and main aim is to make a shift to skill and competency based education".

"We need to move students away from knowledge based education to competency and skill based learning. To implement skill-based, competency based education there is a need to transform and follow the entire pedagogy based teaching-learning process be it classroom teaching, face-to-face teaching or online teaching,” he said.

"The pedagogy based teaching-learning process is more about making students more curious, innovative, creative and providing them experiential learning and this can be achieved only when schools, teachers and principals change the teaching pedagogy," Tripathi added.