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Journalism of Courage
The state government has come up with a new way to ensure students who have failed to clear their SSC exams do not have to repeat a year. Results of the SSC re-examinations were declared Tuesday, with 24,332 students failing. Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde has now announced that these children would be accomodated in skill development courses.
“They won’t be marked as failed. Their marksheets would instead say that they are eligible for a skill development course,” Tawde said.
The Education Minister said that a one-to-one counselling session would be held with each of these students to identify their area of interest. “They would be offered enrollment in state-run Skill Development Centres. The diploma they acquire after completion of the course would be treated on par with HSC studies,” he added.
The state has already initiated 140 such centres across the state, he added. “If five out of 15 students in a village fail their SSC exams, they would feel left out since the others would soon go to colleges. Now, even they would have the option of attending these college that teach skill development. No student from the state board would be failed from now onwards,” he said.
The BJP government had earlier made an announcement in this regard. Out of the 1,42, 968 students who sat for the re-exam, 39,994 passed, while another 78,153 were promoted under the ATKT system.
Tawde also said that another 50,000 students, who had earlier failed to pass the SSC exams, would also be accomodated in such courses. Meanwhile, the BJP Tuesday sought credit for doling out a 20 per cent grant for salaries of teachers in 1,628 schools who were originally approved on non-grant basis. While the Congress-NCP regime had adopted a policy for their migration to grant-based school in 2009 itself, it had failed to approve the salary grants.
The Maharashtra Cabinet on Tuesday approved these grants, which would burden the state exchequer by Rs 143 crore annually. “We see this as an investment for students’ future,” Tawde said. Most Legilsative Council Members from the BJP who have been elected from the Teachers’ Constituency were present for the press conference that Tawde convened after the Cabinet meet. The Cabinet, however, deferred a decision on whether to increase the extent of the grants in a graded manner.
Senate elections postponed again
For the second time in two years, the Maharashtra government Tuesday decided to postpone the elections to the senates of all 16-public funded varsities in the state by a year.
While the Maharashtra Cabinet has argued that the postponement was necessary as crucial amendments were being carried out regarding the management and students council in the Maharashtra Universities Act, sources said this would end up concentrating powers in the hands of Vice Chancellors.
