No cheating, 10.47 lakh examinees quit midway!
SORRY TALE With 15.73% examinees leaving the examination, results are expected to go down this year
ALLAHABAD: They came, they saw and they left! For many high school and intermediate examinees, UP Board was a ‘panacea’ of sorts for clearing the first few ‘hurdles’ in their academic lives. The solution was simple more than the question paper itself. Cheating had become synonymous with the education board of the most populous state in the country.
However, with government tightening the noose on copying/cheating, the students who had come armed with ‘chits,’ ‘answer books,’ and of course in some cases sent impersonators in collusion with copying mafia were left with no option but to quit the examination. Sample this: 15.73% examinees had left the exams by the fifth day on Saturday, which would directly impact results that are expected to dip this year.
Madan Kumar, resident of Jasra block, who had registered to appear in UP Board’s intermediate exams as a private candidate but dropped out, concedes that strict measures against copying deterred him from appearing in the exams. “I am sure this time the pass percentage would be very bad and even examiners would be very strict in awarding marks to students. Therefore I decided to skip the exams this time and try again when the situation normalises,” he said.
Meanwhile, UP Board secretary Neena Srivastava said anti-copying measures have been implemented very strictly this year. These include online allotment of exam centres, mandatory CCTV cameras in all exam halls of all centres, armed police as well as UP STF personnel being deputed to nab and crackdown on copying mafia. In addition, strict vigil is also being kept by administrative machinery of the state to ensure smooth and copyingfree
exams.
Result: It is for the first time in over nine-decade history of the Board that such a large number of examinees have quit midway. Board records reveal that till the fifth day 10,47,406 examinees both high school (6,24,564) and intermediate (4,22,842) had quit by Saturday. The number of overall examinees who left midway in 2016 was 6,45,024.
In high school examination the lowest
pass percentage of 40.07% was registered in 2008 while highest percentage 87.66 % was recorded in 2016. Similarly, in Intermediate examination the lowest overall pass percentage of 65.05% was recorded in 2008 while 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) political will to check copying played a major role in over all pass percentage in UP Board examinations. “During the BJP rule with Kalyan Singh as chief minister, the overall pass percentage of high school had come down to a mere 14% in 1992. However, it again started to increase with SP coming to power between 1993-1995 and 2003-2007. But during the BSP rule, the pass percentage again dropped from 2007-2012. However, during the SP rule between 2012 and 2017 the overall pass percentage for high school remained above 80%,” he said .
Diwedi said with such strict measures in place overall all pass percentage could drop to around 50%