‘Aim for 100 per cent in Class 9 too’

In a bid to curb expulsion of students with poor academic performance by schools after Class 9, the state education department held a meeting at Nagpur on Tuesday and decided to instruct schools to strive to get 100 per cent results in Class 9 too. Schools tend to fail and expel students with poor academic records in Class 9 to ensure that the school secures a 100 per cent result in the SSC board exams. As a result of this, students appearing for the board exam privately after filling Form 17 has gone up, thus causing the government to sit up and address the problem.

According to sources in the department, while the pass percentage of SSC students has improved tremendously, the failure rate in Class 9 has increased correspondingly. Statistics of Mumbai for the year 2014-15 shows that while the pass percentage of SSC was 92.62 per cent, the pass percentage for Class 9 was 83.78 per cent. “Based on observations by NGOs and various government bodies it was found that schools had been failing students due to their poor academic performance, a case in point being a school in Mankhurd that failed 35 students last year,” said an official.

Based on this shocking finding, the department had asked all schools in the city to provide details of the Class 9 results wherein it was found that out of the 1,74,429 students who appeared for the class IX exams only 1,45,652 had been successful. Following this revelation, Nand Kumar, principal secretary of school education, called a meeting of top department officials, including the commissioner and director of school education on Tuesday.

“Mr Kumar has instructed schools that just like they strive for 100 per cent results in the SSC board exams they should strive for 100 per cent results in class IX too. Schools are expected to conduct special coaching for the weaker students so that they also pass the class IX exams and do not have to appear for the SSC board exams privately,” informed Ramchandra Jadhav, deputy director of education, Pune.