CHILDREN OF A LESSER BOARD

Non-SSC Students Look To Bombay HC For Succour As It Decides What To Do With The State’s Normalisation Plans

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Tuesday is likely to be one of the most important dates of the academic calendar for about 17,000 students from Mumbai who have just passed out of class X this year from the ICSE and CBSE boards.

All the action, however, is going to take place outside the classroom and inside one of the rooms of Bombay High Court. Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar is likely to take up for judicial scrutiny the state government’s attempts to “normalise’’ marks of all class-X pass-outs across boards after parents of some ICSE students filed a public interest litigation against it. These parents have alleged that the process is not fair to ICSE and CBSE students and gives SSC students a headstart in the race for a seat in a Mumbai junior college.

More than 12,000 city students have passed out of class X from schools affiliated to the Indian Certificate for Secondary Education this year; the number of students who passed out of the Central Board of Secondary Education-affiliated schools was 3,345. Many of these students have suffered because of the state government’s efforts at standardising marks, say their parents and educationists.

The formula the government worked out led to an average rise of 4 per cent in marks of Mumbai’s 2.72 lakh SSC students; but marks of ICSE and CBSE students went up by only around 2 per cent after the “normalisation’’.

Besides the vagaries of the formula, the way the state education department went about the whole process left hundreds of high-scorers in the ICSE and CBSE examinations high and dry. The plans were announced only after junior colleges in Mumbai started selling admission forms and, by the time the sale of forms was over, very few ICSE and CBSE students — or even their parents — had realised what was happening.

They went by last year’s cut-offs in colleges and found that the rules of the game had changed drastically, thanks to the state government’s attempts at “normalising” marks of students of boards that had different syllabi and different marking systems.

Hundreds of students found themselves nowhere on the merit list of colleges of their choice or failed to get a seat in the subject of their choice. And, worse still, they had no way of going for lesserknown colleges as the sale of forms was already over.

The situation, say parents of the affected students, is particularly worrisome at homes where an ICSE or a CBSE passout has failed to get into a college of choice despite scoring in the 80s or 80s. TOI, over the past few days, has spoken to dozens of these students.

More than 650 Mumbai students, of schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary
Education, have scored 90 per cent or above and 1,021 have scored in the 80s. The percentage of high-scorers would be similar in case of those from schools affiliated to ICSE as well, say teachers and principals of schools affiliated to the ICSE board in Mumbai.

But it is not only ICSE and CBSE students who are unhappy with the state’s “stepmotherly attitutde”. Students of Mumbai’s international schools, too, have complained of a getting a raw deal.

Their class-X scores will only be out in August and so colleges are giving them provisional admission on the basis of their “projected scores’’ or the grades they have scored in their mock exams. But these scores are not converted into percentiles as colleges say it’s difficult to convert mock exam grades into percentiles.

LEFT IN THE LURCH
The way the state education department has gone about ‘normalising’ marks of students has resulted in all-round chaos

DARKNESS AT NIGHT
The government website announces on 27 June its plans to normalise marks of students from all the boards, the same day junior colleges start selling admission forms. The notice, say students and principals alike, is first seen on the website only after college hours.

UNFOLDING DRAMA
The details of how the government plans to normalise scores break out gradually over the next day. A section of the media talks of a strange formula that is going to be used: 10 top scores of all three boards (ICSE, CBSE, SSC) are going to be added up and then divided by 10 to give that board’s ‘representative’ marks. The formula works out to 100 multiplied by the total marks of a student divided by 97.8 (for an ICSE student) or 97.74 (for a CBSE student) or 96.12 (for an SSC student).

THE SECRET FORMULA
Newspapers across the city report in detail about the new formula. But, even then, there is no official briefing by the state education department to explain the intricate details of the formula.

IT’S TOO LATE
Colleges close their sales counters for admission forms on 1 July (Tuesday) even as students (and their parents) try to decipher the government formula. Hundreds of ICSE, CBSE students with high scores do not go the the second-rung colleges at all because they are confident of getting a seat in a college of their choice.

CUT OFF FROM COLLEGE
Colleges announce their first merit list on 3 July and only then do ICSE, CBSE students realise what has hit them. Very few of them are on that first merit list despite scoring high marks. Anxious parents move Bombay High Court for justice. 89% but vocational science remains out of reach

Sixteen-year-old Pranay Bhargav is not just an average student. He slogged for over a year to score 89 per cent in his class-X exams. But he is learning the hard way that, in these days of “normalised’’ marks’’, even 89 per cent is not enough to guarantee him a seat in a college or subject of his choice. Bhargav has just about managed to scrape through into Jai Hind College in the third merit list and, even there, has failed to get the subject of his choice. The ICSE student from Lilavatibai Podar School has taken admission in biology in Jai Hind College after not getting vocational science.

Bhargav’s first choice was Mithibai College or Ruia College and had also applied to D G Ruparel College, Sathaye College and Jai Hind College. “Two of my friends who scored about 89 per cent got into Mithibai science (vocational) last year. The normalisation process has benefited SSC students much more. But the ICSE syllabus is very tough and I, too, have worked a lot for the score I have got,’’ he said. 82% and still without a berth

Astudent from a Bandra school, affiliated to the Indian Certificate for Secondary Education board, has gone into depression after failing to secure admission in any college in Bandra despite getting 82.71 per cent in her class-X examination. “We are anxious and frustrated and we are now just banking on the Bombay High Court order. We applied to all the colleges in Bandra and actually went according to the cut-offs that colleges used till last year. We never thought in our wildest dreams that the scenario would change so drastically this year,’’ the girl’s mother told TOI on Monday. She felt that it was unfair to compare two very different boards (ICSE or the Central Board of Secondary Education with the state board) and try and put the marks on par. “ICSE is actually much tougher than SSC and requires a lot more knowledge and analysis from students and a lot less mugging,” she said on Monday. The court needs to know that this is morally wrong. We feel so helpless right now. All we can do is wait for a favourable order,’’ she added. 92% but refused by 4 colleges

Rahul Nagpal has always been among the top three or top five students in his class in school. And that consistency is evident in his class-X performance as well; he has scored 92.28 per cent in his Indian Certificate for Secondary Education board examinations. But Nagpal, who applied to five colleges, got through into only one of them. He had applied to Sathaye College, D G Ruparel College, Mithibai College, Ruia College and National College for science (vocational). And only one of them, Bandra’s National College, had a place for him. Nagpal is already preparing to take the Common Entrance Test for engineering next year. “What I have scored, 92.28 per cent, is a good score. I thought that I would get into any college of my choice with a score like that,’’ he trailed off. He said he was keen on getting into Sathaye College and confessed that he had never thought that the fall-out of the government’s marks-normalisation scheme would be so disastrous.