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Latest News |
| 05th
February 2010 / Times of India / Hyderabad Edition |
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 Students in a fix over change in SSC syllabus
Hyderabad: The school education department could not have found a better time to change its syllabus for Class X than now! With the SSC public examinations scheduled to begin in just 45 days, on March 22, the department of school education prescribed a 20 per cent increase in its Hindi, Urdu and Tamil (first language papers) syllabus for students of Class X, forcing schools to complete portions in a hurry.
Worse, though the orders to change the syllabus came out in November last year from the director of school education, school managements came to know of the syllabus change only on January 9 when students appeared for their half-yearly examinations, for which the question paper was set by the District Examinations Board. The paper had many surprises for students with over 20 questions worth 20 marks sourced from the new syllabus.
The schools which were expected to start their revisions in the fag end of the year are now hurrying through the new syllabus.
“In Hindi grammar, for instance, 20 new topics have been introduced. The department also deleted some of the topics which were prescribed earlier. The students are finding it difficult to cope with the changes and the teachers have lost hope of completing the syllabus before the board exam,” said a Hindi teacher of a city school.
Teachers said that the department changed even the pattern of the question papers without intimating the schools.
“The subjects which have two papers are now divided further with each of the papers having two sections - subjective and objective questions. Most of the changes were made in the second section (Part B) of the papers,” a teacher said.
With most students having learnt their lessons based on the old syllabus, the teachers feel that the percentages of even the brightest students will come down drastically in SSC-2010. “Some of our bright students scored very poor percentages in their language papers in the half yearly examination due to the change in syllabus. It is unethical of the school education department to change the syllabus at the last moment,” said a city school correspondent.
When asked about the last minute mess up, officials of Government Examinations Department said that the decision to change the question paper pattern got delayed because a committee set up to suggest changes in the pattern delayed the process. “The committee introduced objective questions in the first language papers with some changes in syllabus only in September. A similar change was introduced in first Language Marathi and Kannada papers in the academic year 2008-09,” said an official from the department of government examinations. The officials however, maintained that the change was introduced in consultation with the schools who gave their consent to it.
Meanwhile, Pronoti Suhasini Kavuri, director of Government Examinations said that since the textbooks have not changed it should not be difficult for the students to cope with a change in question paper pattern. However she added that the schools which have the complaint should represent to the District Education Officers (DEOs).
“Once the complaints are forwarded to the government examinations board by the DEOS, I will be able to take action in favour of the students,” Kavuri said.
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