HS pass outs will have to fight it out for college entry

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 1, 2007
The Higher Secondary results are out and there aren’t too many smiling faces. Not that the pass percentage has gone down --- in fact it is up by a modest 2 per cent --- but marks weren’t as free flowing as students who sat for the ISC and CBSE Class XII exams. And that’s a big worry as admission to a college will become tougher.
While revising the syllabus and changing the marking system for this year’s exams, the HS Council had loudly proclaimed that the changes would remove the huge disparity in marks that existed between Higher Secondary students and those sitting for Delhi board exams. The purpose was clearly to give all students seeking admissions to colleges a level playing field. But that clearly hasn’t happened.
An analysis of the results show that HS pass-outs fared poorly when compared to those who have passed the ISC and CBSE Class XII examinations. Take, for instance, this simple statistics --- the HS topper from Bengal, Shornojit Chatterjee from Ramkanai Institution in Bankura, got 91.8 per cent while the ISC topper from the state secured a whopping 98.75 per cent and the CBSE first in Bengal got 96.2 per cent. What’s more, out of the 2.2 lakh-odd who passed this year’s HS exams, only four got past the 90 per cent mark. In both ISC and CBSE, this figure is at least 100 times more.
The problem is that with most colleges in the city and the adjoining districts doing away with admission tests and taking the marksheet as the sole criterion for admissions, the HS students are clearly at a disadvantage. The Calcutta University, for example --- it offers over one lakh seats in 162 colleges under it --- has asked all institutions not to give preferential treatment to any particular board. Loreto College, for instance, has already filled up most of its seats with ISC and CBSE candidates and only a handful seats are left for the HS pass-outs. Even the prestigious Presidency College will be holding admission test in only a handful of subjects. “If we find more high-scoring students from ISC and CBSE we will have to admit them. We can’t help but follow the instruction given to us by the university,” said J. Abraham, principal of Scottish Church College.
In fact, the post-mortem of the results has already begum in the city’s academic corridors to find out why marks weren’t flowing. One reason could be the lack of orientation programme for teachers regarding the changed environment, said All Bengal Teachers Associations (ABTA) general-secretary Shibaparsad Mukhopadhyay. “The syllabus has changed drastically, the marking system has changed, but most teachers, including those who checked answer scripts, were not properly trained,” he told HT.
Result: Students had problem understanding the new exam pattern. “For example, many failed to realise that exceeding world limit would cost them marks,” Abhijan Bandhyopadhyay, a teacher of Patha Bhavan High School, said. “The Delhi boards follow the policy of giving full marks to students if the answer is to the point which the HS Council is yet to follow. Moreover, there are many objective type questions, projects and practicals which help the students to increase their score. All of them make a very big difference,” said Malini Bhagat, principal of Mahadevi Birla High School.
(mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com)