With board’s ‘grace’, result improves

The Class-12 pass percentage of Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) has seen improvement over last year, and one of the reasons being underlined is the PSEB’s decision to go back to grace marks for “marginal” students who narrowly miss the qualifying cut. The result is 65.97% this time, as declared on Monday; better than the 62.26% of 2017. In 2016, when too grace marks were awarded, the pass percentage was 76.77.

In the 2018 results, the board has given five grace marks each to about 20,000 of the more than 3 lakh students who appeared for the exams. “These marks are used judiciously after deliberations for marginal students so that they pass,” said Manohar Kant Kalohia, board chairman.

It was in last year’s results that the board had done away with grace marks, to “ensure that our schools produce students who can face competitive exams in future”. The decision came soon after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), in December 2016, requested the Union ministry of human resource development to build consensus among all state boards on complete removal of the ‘marks moderation policy’ (MMP). This policy was considered to be a reason behind inflated scores in results and thus the soaring cut-offs for undergraduate admissions. PSEB claimed to have taken the lead on scrapping the policy.

Before that, in August 2016, a petition was filed before the Punjab and Haryana high court by advocate HC Arora alleging misuse of powers by the PSEB chairperson in award of grace marks to students of Classes 10 and 12. That remains pending. It demands that these marks be quashed and, if already awarded, be mentioned on the certificates.

Meanwhile, PSEB, unlike in previous years, did not release the final merit list at the time of result announcement.