Odisha minister allays students' admission concerns over Class 10 results

BHUBHANESWAR: Amid protests by students across Odisha over fears that many of them will not be able to secure admission with the marks obtained in class 10 results, school and mass education minister S R Dash Monday sought to allay their concerns, saying there will be no shortage of seats.

The number of seats will be increased in colleges if required, Dash told reporters here. "Under our department, we have approximately 6.03 lakh seats in 2,302 government and private colleges, including ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes). Therefore, there is no need to worry," the minister said.

A whopping 97.89 per cent of the students have passed the High School Certificate, the results of which were declared by the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) on Friday for the first time without holding the annual examinations due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2020, the overall pass percentage in the examination was 78.76. Enraged guardians and students staged sit-ins and raised slogans outside school premises in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, and other districts, alleging that the evaluation process had discrepancies.

The minister said, in previous years, the number of seats in many schools was accordingly increased, ranging from 10-20 per cent, whenever the seats got exhausted. Noting that the results of the ICSE and the CBSE examinations have not yet been declared, Dash said the government would assess the situation and take appropriate steps after the results are out.

"There will be no problem regarding the number of seats. There won't be a situation where students cannot study due to lack of seats," he said.

The evaluation process this year had given 40 per cent weightage to the highest marks obtained in Class 9 in each subject, while the remaining 60 per cent was based on the practice tests conducted in Class 10.

The best result year, out of the past performance for four consecutive years of 2017-2020, was taken as a reference year to allot marks. Meanwhile, the BSE made it clear that there will be no re-evaluation of the published results.

The students, who are not satisfied with their results can appear for the offline examination to be conducted after the ongoing pandemic situation improves in the state, BSE president Ramshis Hazra said.

Alleging discrepancies in their marks, students, particularly of schools run by the Sikhya Vikash Samiti staged protests across the state, including in front of the BSE office in Cuttack.

Questioning the method adopted in the evaluation process, the protestors alleged that the Board had deducted marks submitted by all Saraswati Sisu Mandirs, run by RSS- affiliated Sikhya Vikash Samiti.

Admitting that some schools had submitted very high marks of their students, the Board president said these anomalies were rectified by the Board after a thorough analysis of the results of these schools in the last four years.

Dismissing the allegations of a faulty evaluation process, a BSE official said, students got higher marks this time as compared to what they secured in the previous class.

As many as 5,62,010 students have passed the annual matriculation examination this year. Regarding Class 12, the minister informed that it was earlier decided to publish the results by the second week of August. But steps are being taken to ensure that the results are declared by July 31, following a Supreme Court directive.

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