Higher pass out in SSC Exams

THE results of Secondary School Certificate (SSC) Examinations has been published on Wednesday highlighting the high pass out rates and also more achievers of higher grades over last year’s. The high success rate corroborates the government’s claims of bigger success in secondary and higher education and at such other levels. But questions have also been raised whether the higher pass out also corroborates with higher quality of education or it stands otherwise.
The quality of education also relates to quality of examination management and marking of papers. If teachers work on the government’s instruction that they must give liberal marks to students and that all students must get pass mark, except in critical situation, the quality of such high pass out can come under obvious scanner. These issues need to be cleared before we should claim extraordinary success at SSC, HSC and equivalent levels.
The results also appear highly discriminatory between urban and rural areas. Less than 50 per cent students from rural schools passed the SSC and equivalent examinations for the third consecutive year this year as per a media reports on Thursday. The setback by rural schools compared to those of the urban schools once again shows they are routinely neglected many ways. Their students’ access to advanced tutorial and contact with city coaching centers; which leaks question papers and support students with such other orientation is almost nil. It appears that schools in most urban areas have got all their students passed; and even passed with GPA-5 and this in turn compensate the poor results of the rural schools in the national average.
This year’s results show poor performers were from 875 schools mainly located in rural areas. They have not enough qualified teachers, library and laboratory facilities. High standard of teaching makes students capable to achieve higher marks, but it is also lacking in most rural schools. The urban-rural gap is only widening because of poor education of parents at village level while educated parents in the towns monitor their children’s class performance and keep pressure to improve their achievements.
Rural students mostly fail in English, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Teachers are not available in large number in rural schools to better prepare students. We believe that the government must now take serious step to improve teaching standard at rural schools to reduce urban-rural gap and improve the overall quality of education when high pass out in public examinations such as SSC or HSC has already been achieved.
In our view steps must be equally taken to reform the teaching at secondary level and above to impart students with basic technical subjects so that they can learn a skill at later stage. We must plan our education from lower level to create skilled manpower without passing out graduates that will serves no cause.