Taking note of the high number of students opting out from the quarterly exams of the municipal corporation-run schools, the Vadodara Municipal School Board has decided to conduct exams in January, in order to give a second chance to the students to take a retest before appearing for the annual examinations.

A recently compiled data from all the 115 municipal-run schools in the city showed that almost 3,500 out of 42,000 students did not appear for the quarterly exams held this year.

The number constitutes to around 8 to 10 per cent of the total strength in each standard.

Mehul Zaveri, chairman of the Municipal Education Board, said: “The guidelines given by the education department direct us to promote students of Class I to III on the basis of attendance in the class or examination results.

But teachers say that many students do not appear for the quarterly examination and that too without the knowledge of their parents.”

For this, the Board will first call upon the parents of absentee students by the end of January. It will then make these students take the re-evaluation test by mid-February. Municipal Education Board is introducing such a measure for the first time in the state.

The Ahmedabad Municipal School Board (AMSB) follows a different pattern.

“Following the GCERT guidelines, we take the re-examination of absentee students with an authentic cause on the next day of the test,” said a zonal administrative officer of AMSB.

With most of the parents working as daily labourers, the main issue, according to the Vadodara Municipal School Board, is the lack of attention and interest of the parents on the studies of their children.