In a complete contrast to the Right to Education act according to which a student cannot be detained until elementary schooling, now an amendment has been made to the act according to which Tamilnadu government has made plans such that if a student fails an exam, within a time span of two months, a re-exam will be conducted for classes 5th and 8th and if the students fail the exam, they will be detained in the same class.

As per education department officials, the third term exam will be changed to public exams in both 5th and 8th, and the directorate of Government examinations has been ordered to prepare question papers, following which worksheets and descriptive question papers are prepared for class 5 and 8 respectively. The exams will be for 50 marks and later converted to 100 marks.

Education minister Sengottaiyan had said that the cabinet will discuss and make a decision on the public exams after discussions with educationists as well as parents. It must be noted that the no detention policy was initially brought in to make children motivated to get educated, and it has been alleged that the no fail system has deteriorated the quality of education and that is why this public exams for 5th and 8th classes are proposed.