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Board grapples with poor results by govt schools
Sarbjit Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 13
The Punjab School Education Department is grappling with the problem of how to deal with teaching staff of schools yielding zero or near-zero per cent result in examinations conducted by it.

There are a large number of such schools across the state. The showing of schools located in the countryside is more dismal as compared to those in the urban areas. Most of the schools in the border belt have fared poorly.

“While people across the country celebrate the success of schools that show 100 per cent result, no one sheds a tear for the schools that perform abysmally, showing 100 per cent failure,” said an educationist commenting on the sorry state of affairs prevailing in the Education Department.

Neither does the Council of Ministers analyze the poor showing by schools, nor the officialdom spare a thought for dealing with the problem, he said.

This can be gauged from the fact that officials do not have adequate information on individual performances of government and government-aided schools in board examinations.

When The Tribune reporters approached various district education officers and other officials concerned to collect information, most of them denied having any information, saying that they were yet to get reports regarding results from the schools
concerned.

Efforts were also made to contact the Chairman of the board, but to no avail.

In Amritsar, 34 students of Government Middle School, Gopal Nagar, appeared in Class VIII examination. All failed.

Similarly, at Government School in Anna Nagar, all 22 students who took the examination failed.

The story is no different with government middle schools located at East Mohan Nagar and Adarsh Nagar.

The villages where all students studying in government middle schools failed in Class VIII are: Amarkot (11 students), Jannanian (32), Chabal Khurd (13), Kalsia Khurd (7), Lakhna (10), Loharka Khurd (26), Maddar Mathra Bhaggi (3), Poonian (14), Shahpur (17), Sidhwan (19), Talwandi Sobha Singh (22), Bhoewali (17), Bhani Massa Singh (9), Buraj Pohla (232), Phaijpura (39), Ganda Singh Wala (37).

Most of these schools are located in the border Amritsar-Tarn Taran belt.

At Uggar Aulakh village, only two students passed out of 30, while in Kirhna Nagar only one student passed out of 23 and at Katra Jallian one students passed out of 10.

In matric examination, 49 students appeared at Government High School, Boparai and all flunked.

At Saidpur village also, all 58 students who took the examination failed.

At Harike, 90 students took the examination and again none got through.

Same is the case with schools at Kakkar, Kalaha, Khanpur Sheron, Rajoke, Kot Mohammad, Bhatte Bhaini, Amarkot and Assal Uttar.

In Government Secondary School, Ghariala, 55 students appeared in Humanities discipline in Class XII examination and all failed.

Only two students passed this examination at the school in Tur village.

There are 113 government secondary schools in Amritsar and only 15 schools have regular headmasters.

Around 650 posts of lecturer out of 927 are vacant. Nearly 40 per cent posts of other teachers are also vacant.

At Duggri village in Ropar district, people had even held demonstrations against the near-zero per cent result in Class VIII and poor showing in Class X examination.

In that school, 85 students took the Class VIII examination and 83 failed, while 31 failed out of 45 students in Class X.

Surprisingly, not a single government school in the district has achieved the distinction of 100 per cent result in matric examination.

Only two government schools in the district have shown result of around 97 per cent.

A number of schools have shown results below 50 per cent, 30 per cent and 10 per cent.

In Sangrur district, of the 40 students who appeared in matric examination of Government High School, Kalyan, 38 failed.

Only one students cleared the examination out of 40 students at Government High School, Farwali, and 55 failed out of 72 students at Tallewal village.

The same is a story of Bathinda, Mansa, Kapurthala, Ferozepore, Nawanshahr, Moga, Muktsar, and other districts.

(The story is based on inputs from Varinder Walia, Gurbaxpuri, Deepkamal Kaur, Kiran Deep, Sushil Goyal, Perneet Singh and Dharmender Joshi.)