A committee was set up on Wednesday with experts from various fields to find out how Bengal’s higher secondary candidates can be assessed, a day after the Delhi boards scrapped their school-leaving exams this year because of Covid-19.

The six-member committee, which held its first meeting on Wednesday evening, has to work in a situation where schools hardly have any record of students’ academic performance in the form of marks over the past 15 months.

The committee will “review and evaluate the current situation” and “submit its recommendation within 72 hours” to the school education department.

Close to 10 lakh students, who are preparing for the HS exams, are looking forward to the decision of the committee.

The committee includes the presidents of the secondary education board and the higher secondary council; Subhasankar Sarkar, the vice-chancellor of Netaji Subhas Open University; G.K. Dhali, a professor at SSKM Hospital; Pradeep Saha, the director of the Institute of Psychiatry; and Ananya Chatterjee Chakrovorty, the chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

The tight deadline set for the committee suggests the government is keen to take a decision on the assessment of the school-leaving students at the earliest. Any delay would mean Bengal board students would miss the opportunity to enrol in colleges outside the state.

Education department officials said the committee might consider the Kerala model — the Class X and XII board exams in the southern state were held on campus soon after the Assembly polls got over on April 6, in strict adherence to all safety protocols.

Bengal’s HS candidates had last appeared in an exam before the schools were closed in March 2020 as a precaution against Covid. They had written some of the papers of the Class XI annual exams in March last year.

As the papers scheduled for March 23, 25 and 27 could not be held because of the pandemic, the students were promoted to Class XII based on the papers they had written.

The headmaster of a school in south Calcutta said that while they held tests periodically over digital platforms before the resumption of in-person classes for two months from February 19, in most schools that was not possible because of lack of smartphones and Net connection among students.

The six-member committee has also been asked to suggest how the 11 lakh-odd Madhyamik students could be assessed.

For the HS examinees, whose academic future depends on marks obtained in the school-leaving exams, what lies ahead is far more crucial.

An official of the state education department said the committee had been asked to work on a tight deadline because the Centre had announced on Tuesday evening that the CBSE Class XII results would be prepared on the basis of a “well-defined objective criteria in a time bound manner”.

The ICSE council has said the results will be prepared based on the internal assessments by the schools.

“The committee has to first decide whether we need to cancel the exams because of the pandemic. And if that would be the case, they have to recommend the parame-ters for assessing the students. That is crucial because we do not possess records of internal assessment,” said the official.

Sougata Basu, a teacher at Uttarpara Government School and the secretary of the government school teachers’ association, said only the assessment details about practicals and project work of the plus-II students were available.