new delhi: The Supreme Court has directed the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) to fix the examination centres within a distance of 10 kilometres from the accredited institutions to enable students to appear in the examination with certainty and ease.
A vacation bench of Justices S A Nazeer and P S Narasimha said that a substantial number of students resorting to open schooling invariably come from rural areas.
"Most of these students come from poor strata of the society, depend on unreliable public transport and in all probability are employed for their livelihood. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of inaccessible examination centres for such students. There is yet another factor. The primary, secondary, or senior secondary examinations invariably involve answering multiple papers spread over a period of time.
"Inability to travel long distances for each examination will only have the consequence of the student dropping out, which is the biggest challenge the country is facing today. It is interesting to note that the New Education Policy, 2020, in Chapter 6 records the beneficial effect of reducing the burden of distance to prevent dropping out from schools through group walks, provision of cycles, etc. for the socially and educationally disadvantaged groups," the bench said.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by a NIOS accredited institution seeking a direction from the NIOS to fix examination centres for open schooling students at a reasonable distance from their study centres, referred to as accredited institutions.
The prayer in the petition was for a direction to NIOS to evolve a policy of distance criteria while fixing the examination centres for the examinations conducted by NIOS.
The apex court said a duty is cast upon the NIOS to fix examination centres in a manner to enable students to appear in the examination with certainty and ease.