Over 10L students skip UP board exams in four days

DROPPING OUT Close to 15% of registered examinees did not turn up, which experts say may be result of strict anticheating measures and could lead to a dip in pass percentage

ALLAHABAD: Over 10 lakh students have skipped the Uttar Pradesh Board examinations till Friday, which is likely to cause a dip in the pass percentage of the state’s high school and intermediate exams.

It is for the first time in over nine decade history of the board that such a large number of examinees have failed to appear for the examinations, which experts said could largely be a result of the strict anti-cheating measures implemented by the board in accordance with the state government’s directives.

Till the fourth day of the ongoing UP Board’s High School and Intermediate examinations, 10,44,619 lakh students — nearly 15% of all those who had registered— did not turn appear for the tests.

Board records revealed that out of the total number of examines that did not appear for the exams, 6,24,473 had to sit for high school examinations and 4,20,146 for intermediate. In 2016, the total count of examinees who had left examinations midway was 6,45,024.

When the past one decade of UP Board records were assessed, a significant fluctuation in overall pass percentage in both high school and intermediate examinations was seen, a likely outcome of the anti-copying measures strictly implemented from time to time.

In the higher school examinations, the lowest pass percentage of 40.07% was registered in 2008 while the highest percentage of 87.66 % was recorded in 2016. Similarly, in intermediate examinations , lowest overall pass percentage of 65.05% was recorded in 2008 while the highest pass percentage of 92.68% was registered in 2013.

According to Lal Mani Diwedi, state general secretary of Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shikshak Sangh (UPMSS), varying political will to check

copying under different regimes played a major role in the pass percentage fluctuating.

“In 1992. during the Bharatiya Janata Party rule with Kalyan Singh as chief minister, the

overall pass percentage in high school examinations had come down around 14 % . However, it again started to rise with Samajwadi Party at the helm,” he said.

Diwedi added that during the tenure of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government with Mayawati as chief minister, pass percentage again dropped but “during SP rule between 2012 and 2017 the overall pass percentage for high school exams remained above 80%”.

As per Diwedi, with strict anti-cheating measures in place, the overall all pass percentage in high school and intermediate examination could drop to around 50% this year.

UP Board secretary Neena Srivastava said this year the authorities had adopted strict measures to ensure that the examinees do not use any unfair means while writing the exams.

Giving details of the measures taken, she said they had ensured online allotment of exam centres, installation of CCTV cameras across all the exam halls, deployment of armed police as well as Uttar Pradesh STF personnel to crackdown on the copying mafia besides a strict vigil being kept by administrative machinery of the state.