Chandigarh, May 1
The Haryana Education Department certainly knows how to keep up the standard of education in the state. The board has awarded a whopping 33 grace marks to Class VIII students to make sure that 2008 being observed as the “Year of Education” by the Haryana government is a success.
It is a different matter that officials of the education department and the Haryana School Education Board preferred to keep mum over this “generosity” showered on the students. Also, a complete makeover of the result was orchestrated by way of grace marks to bring about a “substantial” rise in the pass percentage.
Sources said shocked with a 45 per cent pass percentage in the Class VIII examination, the board decided to increase the simple grace given in the examinations from one per cent to two per cent. This meant that the students got 12 grace marks as a matter of routine.
However, when this failed to lift the pass percentage considerably, the board decided to give seven marks each as grace in the subjects of English, mathematics and science in which most students fared badly. Consequently, a total of 33 marks were given to class VIII students. This has taken the pass percentage of the class VIII examination to 80 per cent, which nearly double the real percentage.
The results of class X and XII, too, were only slightly better as compared to the class VIII. In view of the “better” performance by these students, the board decided to give 16 grace marks to students of class X while those of class XII earned 10 marks as grace.
Though officials maintained that giving grace marks was a routine exercise in the examinations, a senior officer of the education department admitted that this time the board had given a lot more marks without quantifying the total grace marks.
Senior officials of the department and the Board have chosen to keep mum over the grace marks and were not available for comment despite repeated attempts. However, insiders said the results were a reflection of the funds being liberally spent on building of infrastructure rather than investing in quality.
