Districts outstrip city schools in HS merit list

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 1, 2007
In a total reversal of trend, district schools have outstripped city schools in the Higher Secondary exam merit list. It has shattered the popular belief that the best students flock to the city-based schools.
As many as 12 out of the 18 probable toppers in the HS exams this year are either from the districts or suburbs. Since, last results came in, only one student from Kolkata — Tomoghno Biswas from Nava Nalanda High School — has scored above 90 per cent.
The school education minister Partha De, however, refused to put too much emphasis on the disparity in results. “It will not be right to say that the students from the districts have done better than those from Kolkata or vice versa. The average result is very good and this is just the beginning. I am very happy with the result. It is true that the pass percentage has not increased in the districts, but with time it will go up,” said De.
One of the main reason for the city losing out is that many students like M Saraswati, the probable topper in the arts section of CBSE in Class XII exams this year, leave the state board after Madhyamik and migrate to other more scoring boards. “I realised that in the Bengal board I could not score much and I shifted to CBSE and have been able to score 93 per cent even in arts,” she said.
Dipak Das, general secretary of West Bengal Government School Teachers Association too aired the same view. “Many top scorers in the city go to ISC and CBSE board schools because that is more scoring. Moreover, the socio-economic condition of villages has now changed. The parents and the students now know the importance of education,” he said.
Teachers from the city however are not too happy with the results. “Though the syllabus and question pattern has changed, not many students from my school have scored as expected. This was the first year for the new pattern and we hope from next year it will be different,” said Shyam Narayan Bandhyopadhyay, principal of Hindu School.
There is a silver lining for city schools though. Despite, more students from the districts making it to the merit lists, Kolkata has registered the highest pass percentage (86.85%). “Since this is the first year for the new pattern, we need at least 3 years to understand the pattern,” said Shiboparsad Mukhopadhyay, general secretary of All Bengal Teachers Association.
However, talking about the reason behind fewer students doing very well, Mukhopadhyay, said, “There were questions from every unit in the new question pattern. So the students who do selective studies were caught on the wrong foot.”
The new pattern of examination has seen an increase of 1.95 per cent in the pass percentage, compared to an almost 5 per cent rise in the last two years. While, there has been 5.78 per cent drop in students scoring between 30 and 44 in individual subjects compared to last year, there has also been a 7 per cent increase in the number of students scoring between 60 and 79 in individual subjects compared to 2006.
“The fact that the new system is working is proved by the fact that many mediocre students have become better. The most important gain is the over 1 per cent rise in students scoring above 80 per cent this year,” said Debashish Sharkar, secretary of West Bengal Council for Higher Secondary Education.
Also, girls have done better than boys with the pass percentage of girls increasing by 4.86 per cent. In the case of boys, the figure stands at 0.16 per cent. But the new mark sheet has created confusion among teachers, who were trying to make the grand total. “The council should have given some directions on how to calculate the grand total. It has only increased our workload,” said Harekrishan Bhattacharya, principal of Hare School.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com