Gujarat: First batch of Class 10 students with grace marks enroll for polytechnic diploma courses

Meanwhile, nearly 45 per cent of polytechnic seats in private institutes continue to remain vacant even after the state government relaxed rules and encouraged mass promotions in classes 10 and 12 in Gujarat.

The seats in the private institutes continue to remain vacant after two regular rounds of online admissions and two additional rounds for vacant seats that ended November 30 last year.

The mass promotions of students in classes 10 and 12 last year happened on account of the pandemic as board exams were declared cancelled. Soon, the Gujarat government eased rules by allowing students with grace marks to enrol in polytechnic institutes.

According to data from the education department, 1,107 of the 30,157 students who were eligible after adding the grace marks awarded by the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) got admissions for diploma engineering in December 2021.

Following two regular rounds of online admissions that were conducted for admissions to over 66,000 diploma engineering seats across 144 government, grant-in-aid (GIA) and self-financed institutes (SFI), two additional rounds for vacant seats were conducted between November 1 and November 30, 2021.

“Of the students of Class 10 who passed Maths, Science and English with grace marks, those with an aggregate of 35 per cent were considered eligible. Now, after adding the grace marks and declared mass promoted as the passing marks of GSHSEB is 33 per cent, students with 35 per cent aggregate were considered as eligible for the admission on vacant seats during these additional two rounds,” said Bhaskar Iyer, Member Secretary, Admission Committee for Professional Diploma Courses (ACPDC).

On November 5, 2021, the Gujarat government had declared that students with grace marks in Class 10 would also be eligible for admissions to diploma engineering in polytechnic institutes across the state. Education Minister Jitu Vaghani had announced that the state government decided to do away with the eligibility criteria that barred students with grace marks to get admissions in polytechnic colleges in an attempt to fill the vacant seats seeing an opportunity for the first time as board exams for classes 10 and 12 were cancelled.

However, despite these relaxations and attempts, nearly 45 per cent seats in private polytechnic colleges remain vacant. Of the total 45,600 seats in 106 SFIs, admissions to 25,229 were confirmed while remaining 20,371 remained vacant. Takers for government colleges closed at 73 per cent as out of the total 19,100 seats in 31 government colleges, 14,050 were filled and 5,110 remained vacant.

Almost one-third (or 2.6 lakh of 8.5 lakh) students of Class 10 were mass promoted with grace marks in 2021.