The principal secretary of state education has ordered that all Std IX students of the state board who fail, have to compulsorily file for the Form 17 to appear for the SSC exam as private candidates, in order to avoid wasting an academic year
After a news report on the large number of students failing in Std IX and dropping out of school was brought to the notice of education officials, new measures are being taken to stop them from doing this.
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The principal secretary of state education has ordered that all Std IX students of the state board who fail, have to compulsorily file for the Form 17 to appear for the SSC exam as private candidates, in order to avoid wasting an academic year.
Also read: 18% students failed in Std IX this year
“We collated data of Std IX results and found that a large chunk of children fail. We also found that there’s a 9 per cent dropout rate in schools after Std IX. Our aim is to reduce the dropout rate,” said Nand Kumar, principal secretary of state education. He added that, according to the figures, only one-third of the Std IX students who fail, apply for Form 17.
“Many either end up losing an entire academic year or giving up on education. So we are asking schools to encourage more of those students to opt for Form 17 instead, and appear for Std X examinations as private candidates,” he added.
mid-day had recently reported about a survey conducted by the south zone education department; of 372 schools in the zone, almost 18% of students who took the Std IX exams in March-April 2015 were seen to have failed the tests.
“I wanted to know the status of Std IX students in schools, so I’d asked schools to share these details. We found that almost 7,000 of the 39,000 students who appeared for the exam have failed. It’s surprising that all these students fail only in Std IX,” said B B Chavan, south zone education inspector.
After reviewing the data collected, Chavan also forwarded the report to Principal Secretary Nand Kumar for further discussion. As reported, schools have, time and again, been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, especially after activists and parents pointed out the large number of students being “deliberately” failed in Std IX.
According to figures made public by the south zone education department, some schools failed close to 42% of their Std IX batch. In one school, 48 out of a class of 113 in Std IX, failed to make it to Std X. While schools keep blaming this problem on the fallout of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, activists have stated that the main reason for schools deliberately failing ‘weak’ children in Std IX is because they want 100 per cent results in the SSC examinations.
“RTE cannot be blamed for everything. Right now, we are focussing on ensuring that students don’t drop out of schools because of failure. Simultaneously, we will also check with schools personally as to what is the reason behind such a large number of failures,” added Nand Kumar.
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