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Latest News |
| 24th
July 2010 / Times of India / Pune Edition |
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Class X marks: State is No. 1 in 90-plus club
Mumbai: Only 0.00041% of students who cleared Class X from the Bihar state board scored 90% and above — that’s a poor four out of 9.74 lakh! On the other hand, a whopping 41,000 scored over 90% from Maharashtra, that is 3.22% of all the students who took the exam in 2010. If marks are anything to go by, Maharashtra is sure to produce several Einsteins this year.
The state board of education has showered more SSC students with marks over 90% than almost every other state board in the country. Even the Uttar Pradesh topper, with a mere 92%, will have a tough time getting into the top colleges in Maharashtra, where scores of students have bagged 100% in SSC.
While the Uttar Pradesh exams are replete with Munnabhai stories and tales of mass copying, the board — with a phenomenal 36.3 lakh students appearing for the Class X exams — has produced only two 90 percenters. Mumbai alone has 13,546 in that grade; moreover, it has over three times the number of ninety percenters than the state of Gujarat and twice those in Karnataka. While the government’s job is done once the results are out, parents feel that the real challenge lies ahead, once their children with inflated scores of nearly cent per cent grow up and face the competition around them. “With so many thousands of students scoring over 90%,their frustration levels are set to rise once they realise they cannot make it to the college of their choice. These inflated marks will also give rise to an inflated ego and self-confidence. It’s a bit like a balloon that’s going to burst really fast,” says Arundhati Chavan, president of the PTA United Forum.
The Maharashtra state board isn’t the only one that has lavished marks on its students.While the state board may have gone one step too far with the number of cent percenters this year, ICSE and CBSE boards have also been known to be lenient. This year, of the the 1.11 lakh ICSE students who cleared the exam, 13% scored 90% and above. But in absolute terms,this works out to a mere 2,260 ninety percenters in Maharashtra.
So where exactly are our board exams headed? Suhas Pednekar, principal of Ramnarain Ruia College, feels it’s high time we reform the education system in Maharashtra. “I feel bad about the fact that there’s a debate raging in Maharashtra about the marks scored by students in different boards,”he says.
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