The Bengal higher secondary council has announced that it will continue with the reduced syllabus and changed question pattern for the higher secondary exams and Class XI annual exams next year.

Since uncertainty looms over the reopening of schools amid the Covid pandemic, the council has decided to continue with the curtailed syllabus.

A notice addressed to all the heads of institutions from the council’s secretary-in-charge Tapas Mukherjee on Friday said: “I am to inform you that the council has decided to continue with the reduced syllabus and changed question pattern for Class XI annual examination and higher secondary examination for 2022.”

The school education department had in November last year announced that the syllabus would be slashed by 30 to 35 per cent because on-campus classes could not be held.

An official of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education said it is still not clear when schools can reopen , which is a must for covering the whole syllabus, because the threat of the pandemic has not subsided. “Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that the state government will try to reopen schools on alternate days after the Puja vacation in November, subject to improvement in situation. Even if that were to happen, a substantial number of classes would be missed by then and it would not be sufficient for covering the syllabus. So, we are going ahead with the reduced syllabus,” he said.

Based on the reduced syllabus, the council had in February released topic-wise division of marks for each subject for the HS 2021 exams. “This distribution would be continued in the hope that the exams would be held next year with the situation turning conducive,” the official said.

In 2021, despite the council announcing the distribution of marks, the exams — scheduled for June — could not be conducted following a renewed surge in Covid cases.

In the absence of on-campus exams, the council gave 40 per cent weightage to a student’s performance in the Class X board exams and 60 per cent to Class XI annual exam marks and the combined weightage was added to 30-mark practical or 20-mark project to arrive at the final marks of an HS 2021 candidate.