HS board chief rues ‘falling standards’

After declaring the HS results,board president Muktinath Chatterjee said,“We must admit that the whole standard of education has been deteriorated to an alarming extent in the last couple of years.”

Debasish Sarkar,former secretary of WBHSE,said that the HS pass percentage had increased tremendously. In 1982,when HS was introduced,the pass percentage was 52.96 per cent,but this year it is around 77.88 per cent. In 2011,the figure was 76.54 per cent. “How can he say that standards of education are deteriorating?” Sarkar said.

This year,410 students secured marks within 90-100 (AA grade) while 84,895 and 65,372 students secured C+ (40-49 marks) and C (30-39) grades,respectively,which according to Chatterjee,is unsatisfactory. He said that the “degeneration of education is an unavoidable part of the total degradation in the society,in the erosion of values among the stakeholders”.

Chatteree said that students who secured between 30-49 are facing difficulty in getting admission in colleges as they cannot study honours with such low marks. The percentage of students securing 30-49 is very high this year and unless a new syllabus is framed and new system of evaluation conducted,there will not be any improvement in overall standards of education,Chatterjee said.

Syllabus panel proposals with CM

The committee which has been formed to frame a new syllabus for 2013 has submitted its proposal to the chief minister for her approval. According to the recommendations,it was decided that percentile system of evaluating Higher Secondary students will be introduced from the next academic year so that HS students are on a par with other boards like CBSE and ICSE as far as admission to colleges is concerned.

The percentile system helps locate a student’s position in order of merit. For instance,if a student achieves fifth rank among 100 students,his or her percentile would be 95 (100 minus 5),indicating that the student has outperformed 95 students.

From 2015 onwards,the board has decided to introduce more objective type questions. Teachers’ training programmes will be conducted from August 2012 to familiarise them with the new syllabus. Project work will also be introduced in every stream — arts,science and commerce.