North Bengal pips south in HS

KOLKATA: After successive years of steady improvement in results at the secondary and higher secondary level, the trend has reversed dramatically with the success rate dipping alarmingly at this year's HS examination to complement the slide in the Madhyamik results a week ago. Only one student scored AA or over 90% in all six subjects.
"The success rate has declined from 80.78% last year to 76.54% this year, primarily owing to low scores in subjects such as philosophy, nutrition, economic geography, economics, history, mathematics and political science.Why students have fared poorly in these subjects needs to be looked into," said West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education president Onkarsadhan Adhikari.
Though the success rate had dipped in 2010 (80.78%) against 2009 (82.08%), the first time since 2004, this year's nosedive has sent alarm bells ringing. The slide in success rate among boys is significantly higher than girls. Among male candidates, 77.67% passed this year against last year's success rate at 82.795%. Among female examinees, the pass percentage dipped from 78.265% to 77.67%.
However, the gender ratio in terms of pass-outs has increased from 801 girls per 1,000 boys last year to 815 girls per 1,000 boys this year.
While 38,543 students failed in more than two subjects, another 43,247 students failed in two subjects.
A staggering 51,990 students failed in one subject. Unable to grapple with failure, one Soumyajit Ghosh of Kishore Bharati School in Behala jumped off the 5th floor terrace of his residence in Mahendra Banerjee Road, Behala. He is admitted in CMRI Hospital and is said to be in a critical condition.
However, it wasn't all gloom on Saturday. On the brighter side, 54 students scored AA in five subjects, 489 in four subjects, 1,692 in three subjects and 4,911 in two subjects. The subjects in which maximum number of students scored AA were geography (7,407), philosophy (7,093), physics (4,376), chemistry (2,494) and bioscience (2,711). The only student who scored AA (over 90%) in all six subjects - Bengali, English, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and bioscience - was Punya Chatterjee of Durgapur AVB High School.
Congratulating the successful candidates, chief minister Mamata Banerjee invited the top performers in Madhyamik and HS examination to Kolkata. She would meet the meritorious students who fared well in Madhyamik in her chamber at the state secretariat next Friday, followed by HS students at the Town Hall.
Another positive factor was the higher participation of girls. Howrah registered more enrolment of girls than boys while in Hooghly, enrolment of girls was almost on par with boys.
At the same time, An alarming number of students dropped out of the exam after filling forms and paying examination fees. In all 20,181 students did not appear for the examinations against 15,285 students who did not sit at the tests last year.
"Absence of a candidate from examination due to medical and other reasons may be unavoidable but
Absenteeism due to lack of confidence is a matter of concern, particularly when following the recommendations of NCF 2005, we have taken many steps to de-stress the examinees," said Adhikari.
Kolkata fared the best among the districts. The city has recorded the highest percentage at 87.82%. The pass percentage though took a dip from last year's 90.265%. Cooch Behar recorded the lowest pass percentage at 64.18, a slight dip over 65.30% recorded last year.
However, in the overall results, north Bengal outshined south Bengal. Though the four districts of Cooch Behar (64.18%), Jalpaiguri (64.46%), Uttar Dinajpur (67.26%) and Dakshin Dinajpur (65.45%) are way behind Kolkata (87.82%), Howrah (83.83%) and Hooghly (83.97%), majority of the merit list holders are from north Bengal. Soumen Saha from Dinhata High School of Cooch Behar scored 471 and is the probable topper from the state. Son of a cloth merchant and an anganwadi worker, Soumen wants to pursue medicine in one of the colleges in Kolkata.
Pallabi Karmakar of Sanidebi Jain High School in Dinhata, Dipanjan Roy from Moinaguri Subhash Nagar High School in Jalpaiguri and Sanchayan Bagchi of Balurghat Boys High School scored 648 and are probable third. The fourth student to score the same marks is Kaushik Ghosh from Bidhan Chandra Institution, Durgapur.
Soham Dutta from Lalit Mohan Adarsha Ucchya Vidya Mandir in Balurghat, South Dinajpur scored 467 and is the probable fourth. The only two from Kolkata in the top-10 are joint second on the merit list - Soham Mukherjee from South Point High School and Ayan Chatterjee from Ballygunj Jagabandhu Institution. Both scored 470.
On Saturday, the release of results on a private Bengali television channel ahead of the formal announcement by the council sparked off a controversy. When asked how the channel could get hold of the results before it was announced, Adhikari fumbled. "If the state government asks us to probe the matter, we will do so. How the results were shown before the formal announcement is not important to me. We are a department working under the state government," he said.