NEWS reports have it on Wednesday that government has asked school authorities to allow students who would fail in ‘pre qualification test’ to appear in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC), Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent examinations if they have 70 percent class attendance. The ministry of education circulated the new rule to the media on Tuesday saying such candidates must not be held back to appear next year. The directive already sent to all school, college, madrasahs, technical and vocational institutes has asked their authorities to ensure that none should be left out for failing to qualify in the test if they have the least mandatory class attendance. As we see the circular has come as a big surprise as it is going to break the very basic pre-qualification standard and rules which were so far governing the selection of candidates in public exams over the decades.
Most surprisingly, the decision has added a new alternative to salvage the failed candidates under the cover of better class attendance. We must say it can’t be accepted as a new rule rather an exception. It has indeed raised eyebrows at many levels including students, teachers, guardians and social think-tanks who see in it a populist approach of the government but at a huge cost to academic discipline including keeping pressure on students to read more and do better results and on teachers to be more attentive to teaching. Now if results do not help, attendance will help and if someone has poor attendance, pressure from big brothers may work well to put the name of a failed candidate to appear before those final exams.
It is true that some schools bar students who fail to perform well in the qualification tests from appearing in the SSC and HSC exams simply to make sure the highest success rates of their schools in those exams. The education ministry holds the view that school authorities retain many students for failing in one or two subjects. There should be flexibility particularly in cases of good scores in other subjects or in cases where a good student may have failed to sit for test in certain subjects due to sickness.
We believe exceptions are at work everywhere but it must be purely on merit basis. Good attendance can’t be an alternative to failed students. We must say the government should not make the public exams system vulnerable to misuse at a time when the flooding of GPA-5 results is already causing huge erosion to quality of education.
Let there be no compromise as far as public examinations are concerned. The government must review the decision to stop falling it into manipulation by opening window of a new business under the cover of qualifying disqualified students to sit for public exams.
