School Education Minister K A. Sengottaitan put to rest interpretations that Public exams for Classes 5 and 8 would be held from this academic year. He said that the current pattern would continue for the next three years and the changes proposed by the Central Government would come into effect only after 3 years.
As of now status quo will prevail. The Minister went on to say that they had clarified to the Centre that as far as Tamilnadu is concerned, they needed a period of three years to upgrade the educational skills of the students and only then the proposed scheme could be implemented. When questioned if the Centre had accepted the plea of Tamilnadu, he quipped that the decision was purely an individual State decision and the Centre had given guidelines to the States to implement the changes as they deemed fit.
