In order to advance to the next grade at the end of the academic year, students in Classes V and VIII will now need to take yearly exams. The state government's decision to enact major modifications to the Odisha Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, 2010 through the Odisha Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Rules, 2025 was announced by the School and Mass Education department on Wednesday.
Students in Class V and VIII will be required to take annual exams under this amendment, and their professors will give them two months of extra instruction if they don't receive enough grades to meet the requirements for promotion. Students who do not pass will not be promoted, and they will need to retake the test.
The commissioner-turned-secretary of the department, Shalini Pandit, stated that the new regulation will be applied to both public and private schools starting with the 2025–2026 school year.
However, the amendment clarifies that no child would be removed from school before completing primary school. The move intends to ensure that learning levels are met prior to students being promoted, with a focus on core learning. The National Education Policy-2020, which emphasizes the necessity of ongoing assessment and formative evaluation of students in order to enhance learning outcomes, is in line with the modification.
According to the department, these changes will take effect as soon as they are published in the Odisha Gazette and are consistent with Section 38 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
Detaining students in a class based on their annual examination performance was stopped in the state after the Right to Education (RTE) Act was passed in 2009. Section 16 of the RTE Act stipulated that “no child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education (Classes 1 to 8)”.
However, in December last year, the Ministry of Education did away with the ‘no detention’ policy for students of classes V and VII, allowing schools to fail students who are unable to clear class promotion examinations. States like Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi have already implemented the change.
