Muted celebrations in city

MUMBAI: When the Mumbai division topped the charts in 2006 and 2007 in the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams, most college principals took pride in saying that the only way forward was to beat our own record. A year later, in 2008, the Mumbai division - comprising Mumbai, Thane and Raigad - slipped to the second-last position with a pass percentage of 80.24%.This year, we took a further beating, as the pass percentage dropped by nearly 6%.The results were announced on Thursday.
Celebrations were muted in colleges. One of the more popular science institutes, D G Ruparel College, was expecting larger numbers in the toppers' club. Principal Pradeep Kulkarni attributed the dismal performance to a specific increase in the number of private candidates who took the exam this year. "Most of them take the exam privately as they fail in class XI. Such students find it difficult to clear the Boards,'' he said. The pool of repeaters and private students has risen over the last one year by nearly 2,000, and a closer look at their performance mirrors Kulkarni's conclusion. The pass percentage of repeaters was 57% in 2008, compared to 37.62% in 2009.
Many feel the drop is due to the fact that an increasingly large number of students are paying scant attention to the HSC exam, and are instead concentrating on entrance tests for medicine and engineering colleges. Earlier, the HSC marks were of paramount importance to students applying to a professional course. Now however, the HSC is only a qualifying exam for the course, and the marks scored don't really count, as professional courses have their own entrance tests. "Many students do not attend lectures as their focus is on the CET, IIT, et al," said Harsha Mehta, principal of SIES College, Sion.
"In case of science students, it has become incredibly easy, even for low-scorers, to make it to an engineering college. Many of these colleges are not very good, and even take in students who have low CET scores. This often makes students complacent, with the result that they study for the Board exams only a couple of months in advance," said Suhas Pednekar, principal of Ramnarain Ruia College, Matunga.
Some academicians feel that junior college students who want to stay on in the same institution for senior college are often complacent about the HSC exam, as it is mandatory for colleges to admit all in-house students who pass to senior college.
Students at Sathaye College, said principal Kavita Rege, were unhappy as their scores were several notches below what they expected. Her college saw a marginal fall in pass percentage in science from 96% in 2008 to 94% this year.
What got Jai Hind College principal Kirti Narain wondering was how the city failed to do better in spite of orals and marks set aside for internal college-level projects. "Probably, paper correction must have been stricter this year,'' she hazarded. However, HSC board chairperson Vijaysheela Sardesai ruled out that possibility by stating that the Board had drawn up uniform guidelines for paper correction across all zones.
According to divisional secretary of the state board, Mumbai, Basanti Roy, the reason for the dip is, in part, due to the huge increase in the number of students appearing for the exam from Mumbai. There are over 32,000 more students appearing for the HSC this year when compared with the previous year. Roy points out that the Mumbai division came down heavily on malpractice in the exam, and introduced a stringent set of norms for conducting examinations.
Incidentally, the results of nearly 90 students were withheld this year - this included the results of 34 students from other Boards, who did not have the necessary documents. Another 51 students from LT Shinde Junior College, Bhandup, had their results withheld as they could not prove that they had cleared Class XI. The state board had disqualified LT Shinde College, which was running out of a few rooms in a slum. The results of another three students were withheld in cases of cheating. This year, for the first time, the board has awarded students with a disability or handicap 20 grace marks, after Kunal Shetty, a learning disability student, was failed by 20 marks last year and took the Board to the High Court.