School principals raise concern about pitiable academic results of classes 5, 8

Spokesperson for Maharashtra School Principals’ Association, Mahendra Ganpule, said, “Many students have not been able to pass despite grace-marks. Teachers from urban areas say they have observed close to 5 per cent failure, whereas rural schools have a slightly lesser failure rate at 4 per cent. This indicates that these children have simply not understood even basic concepts. This could be because they were not attending school or took an absolutely casual approach to exams until now due to the no-detention policy.”

The SCERT had prepared question-papers for these exams. “Even as there is no centralised compilation of marks from these exams, because schools were asked to conduct these exams at their individual levels, several principals raised their concerns during the workshop,” said Ganpule.

Students who fail these exams will get another chance with re-examination after getting supplementary guidance in the subject they failed. If they fail again, these children will repeat the class. Until now, children would proceed to the next class until Class 8, due to no detention-policy under the Right To Education (RTE) Act.

Maharashtra’s school education department has scrapped the policy and introduced mandatory annual exams in Classes 5 and 8 to proceed to the next class. The move was welcomed by educators who think that due to fear of having to repeat the class, students would take their exams more seriously.