Braving severe odds, corporation school students make the cut in Class X

CHENNAI: Naveen Kumar loves cricket. Such was the 15-year-old’s fascination for the sport that he would often delay exam preparation. “He never studied until the night before the exam. On the (exam) day, he would wake up at 3am on his own and study the portions,” said his mother P Karpagam.
On Wednesday, Kumar was one of the topppers among Class X students of Corporation High School in Erukkanchery, while his classmate S Shruthi was another.

Both came up trumps in the exams without parental support. While Kumar’s father, a lorry driver, battles renal failure and remains bed-ridden, Shruthi lost her father when young. “My time is spent on taking my husband to the hospitals. I know little about what my son does at school,” said Karpagam.
Kumar’s older brother, who dropped out in Class XII due to his father’s ailment and is the family’s breadwinner making around Rs 8,000 a month, Shruti’s mother makes Rs 6,000 a month helping out in an optical showroom. The two dream of becoming bureaucrats. “Becoming an IAS officer is my mother’s dream. I am prepared to chase it for her,” Shruthi told TOI.
As many as 5,516 students of GCC-run schools passed the exams for a pass percentage of 93.36, just 0.27% better over last year’s figures. Centum scorers dipped drastically this year, with just one student scoring 100 in social science compared to 189 students in 2017. The number of students who topped the 450 mark barrier too fell with only 40 students making the cut. In 2017, it was 312.
Thirty corporation schools managed a 100% pass record this year against 20 last year. The Corporation High School in Kodungaiyur made the all-pass list for the sixth year running. Each of these schools would be given a cheque of Rs 1 lakh by the corporation.