Heads of government-run high and higher secondary schoolshave claimed students voluntarily stayed away from appearing as regularcandidates, after facing flak last year over illegally preventing thousandsfrom appearing in the annual JKBOSE Matriculations exams.
The school heads have submitted enrollment data of theirinstitutions for past few years justifying the detention of the students inclass 10 annual 2018 exams in which around 13000 students were barred to appearas regular students.
Greater Kashmir had exposed the illegal practice followingwhich the school education department directed heads of government schools tosubmit enrollment data of class 9th and 10th of the past two years in advanceto ensure all students are allowed to appear in 2019 regular examination.
The move was also initiated to ensure the illegal practicedetaining students for showing bolstered results was checked.
“The school heads submitted the figures and claimed that itwas not any forced detention but students voluntarily agreed to appear asprivate students in exams,” said an official dealing with the subject.
He said the government made statistical analysis of thefigures submitted by the schools which blocked any further action in thisregard.
“The schools have fudged the record and now claimed thatsome students were given discharge certificate while as some were dropouts andsome failed to qualify the Golden Test,” the official said.
However, since 2015 heads of schools have been barred tostop any student on the basis of poor performance in Golden Test.
Instead, the schools are supposed to provide remedialclasses to these students and prepare them for appearing as regular students.
“But they (school heads) have managed to convince thedepartment that only 4000 students didn’t appear as regular students,” theofficial said, adding that a committee was constituted to ascertain the datasubmitted.
“The government received figures from SIE and school heads.Then formal analysis was done on basis of figures submitted by the schoolsheads. The committee also analysed this figure only and submitted its report tothe government,” he said.
However, the official said the JK Board of School Education(BOSE) has received more than 21000 examination forms from fresh privatestudents to appear in bi-annual exams.
“This has raised a doubt on the figures submitted by theschool heads,” he said.
As per JKBOSE figures, around 38944 students from governmentschools had appeared as regular candidates in the annual 2017 exams while asthe number was only 26089 in 2018 class 10th exams.
As already reported, official figures available with StateInstitute of Education (SIE) Kashmir reveal that 53008 students from governmentschools had appeared in their annual class 9th annual 2017 exams, who laterwere promoted to Class 10 in 2018.
Out of them, only 26089 students of the total enrolment hadappeared in 2018 annual class 10th exams, raising the question about themissing students.
The result of annual 2018 class 10th was declared by JKBOSEon December 29 last with a pass percentage of 75.44 percent.
Given the improvement in pass percentage as compared toprevious years, it was revealed that the government schools had found ashortcut by filtering out a record number of students, mostly from poor andmiddle class families, allowing only those students to appear in the annualexamination who they perceived had more chances of passing it.
Secretary school education department, Ajit Kumar Sahu saidthe department has forwarded the report to JKBOSE for further examination.