Patna: Angered over class 12 results, students protest outside inter council office

PATNA: Scores of students on Wednesday Inter Council building in Patna against results of class 12 examination of Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), in which a whopping 64 per cent of students in Bihar have failed this year. Nearly two out of three students have failed to clear the Intermediate exam, highlighting once again the woeful condition of education in Bihar. Last year, 62.19 per cent of the students passed the Intermediate exam. The year before, it was 87.45 per cent. This year, it is just 35.24 per cent. Experts attributed the plunge in the number of students passing to strict anti-unfair-means measures the board enforced this year. The authorities had decided to clean up the examination which had been beleaguered by the toppers' scam that broke out last year and by allegations of cheating. Of the 12,40,168 students who took the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Plus-Two test in all three streams (science, commerce and arts), as many as 8,03,053 students have failed to secure 30 per cent - the minimum marks needed to pass. The poorest performance is in the science stream, with only 30.11 per cent of the 6,46,231 exam-takers scraping through. The humanities fared slightly better with 37.13 per cent passing, and the commerce stream did best with a pass percentage of 73.76. In the humanities, only 6.74 per cent students have secured first division (marks of 60 per cent and above), while in science only 8.93 per cent of students have secured first division. This, when education has the highest budgetary allocation (Rs 25,251.39 crore or nearly 16 per cent of the total state budget). And this when the state government is running various welfare schemes for Plus-Two students - free textbooks, free uniforms, scholarships, academic tours twice a year, and sanitary napkins for girls. The pass percentage this year is the lowest in five years but perhaps not the lowest ever, according to board sources. "We are examining if this year's Intermediate results is the lowest in terms of pass percentage in the history of the BSEB and also across other boards in India," a BSEB official had said on Tuesday under cover of anonymity. However, another board source said: "The worst result was in 1997 when only 14 per cent of students cleared the Intermediate exam." BSEB chairman Anand Kishor, who released the results on Wednesday, was blunt. "The drop in pass percentage was mainly due to the strict crackdown on use of unfair means," he said. "There was strict frisking of students, there was regular monitoring of examination by DM (district magistrate) and SP (superintendent of police), and students at the examination were video-recorded." Another indicator that the results reflect the reality: The toppers are not from unheard-of schools like previous years, when students from institutes such as the now-de-affiliated Vishun Roy College in Vaishali regularly scored stunning marks. The Intermediate science topper this year, Khushboo Kumari, who secured 431 out of a total of 500, is from Simultala Residential School (Jamui), chief minister Nitish Kumar's project to up the educational standards in the state. "The main reason behind the low pass percentage is with the introduction of bar coding of answer sheets and evaluation of copies under CCTV coverage, the board has successfully broken the role of the education mafia," said Shankar Kumar, first principal of the Simultala school set up on the lines of the Netarhat Residential School in Jharkhand. "With bar coding of answer sheets, a candidate's identity is not disclosed - there is no scope of recommendation for increasing marks. In the past few years, it was observed the students from particular affiliated colleges (non-government colleges) used to top." The toppers' scam last year blew the lid off the rampant racket and the board had to cancel the affiliations of 200 Intermediate colleges/schools out of the 212 educational institutions that came under the scanner. Most of the institutes were running from single rooms with no infrastructure facilities. All they had was a nexus with senior board officials. The strict anti-cheating measures this year were not just aimed at the students. "Invigilators were not allowed to take their mobile phones inside the examination centre. There was an invigilator for every 20 students and they had to give an undertaking that they had properly frisked students," a board official said. Section 144 of the CrPc (prevention of large gathering of people) was clamped outside examination centres to prevent outside help and even parents were not allowed within 200 metres of the exam centres. Ravi Ranjan, a teacher at Patna High School, said the questions this year were easier than last year. "There was also no change in the marking system, only bar coding of answer sheets was introduced," Ravi said. Education experts said the blame should not be put only on students, and the state government was equally culpable. "The standard of school education in Bihar is very poor," said N.K. Choudhary, economist and retired Patna University teacher. "There is shortage of teachers and the schoolteachers are also not qualified as most of them are on contract. The schools have no academic curriculum and most of the time teachers are engaged in non-academic works such as preparations for government programmes such as Bihar Divas, prohibition campaign, election and census duties." (With inputs from The Telegraph Calcutta)