In the first week of June the Maharashtra government announced the introduction of a new Allowed To Keep Terms (ATKT) scheme for failed SSC (class X) and HSC (class XII) students. Under the scheme, effective from the current academic year which began in July, students will be eligible for ATKT and admission into junior college (classes XI and XII) provided they haven’t failed in more than two subjects. In a burst of magnanimity, Maharashtra education minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil announced on July 11 that the ATKT option, which was earlier available only to under-graduate students, will now be extended to include SSC and HSC students. Now they too will be allowed to rewrite the papers they failed in while still holding on to their college seats.
“To ensure that students, who failed in one or two subjects, didn’t lose a full year, the Maharashtra State Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) concluded that offering the ATKT option is preferable to holding supplementary exams. SSC students, who are eligible for ATKT, will be allowed to enroll in junior college, but they must clear their failed subjects in the October 2009 or March 2010 exams. Similarly, HSC students too must pass their failed subjects before the final exams of their first year degree courses,” explained Vikhe-Patil.
According to education ministry estimates, over 200,000 students across the state who failed in one or two subjects in the SSC (class X) exam will benefit from this proposal. Similarly, about 300,000 students who failed in one or two subjects in the HSC (class XII) exam will get a second chance. However this magnanimity has raised adminis-trative feasibility questions — particularly for class XII part-failures, considering that there are a plethora of study options for them. The subjects they failed may be completely unrelated to their chosen stream in college.
Although projected as a student-centric proposal clothed in a cloak of altruism, the prime motivation behind the ATKT initiative seems to be the reluctance of MSBSHSE to conduct supplementary exams shortly after the March SSC and HSC exams. On June 25, MSBSHSE chairperson Vijaysheela Sardesai ruled out the possibility of conducting a full-fledged supplementary exam within a month of declaration of the March exam results, citing the board’s workload and the mandate to hold exams in March and October each year. “It’s not possible to conduct three exams per year,” Sardesai stated. Meanwhile, a barrage of questions arising out of the ATKT concession prompted education minister Vikhe-Patil to back down. He said the scheme is valid only for the academic year 2009-10.
Against the backdrop of declining teaching-learning standards in schools affiliated with the MSBSHSE — only about 50-60 percent of students manage to pass the board’s class X exam — educationists in the state view this initiative as yet another populist move to harvest votes in the forthcoming Maharashtra state elections scheduled for October. With the Bombay high court having struck down the proposal to reserve 90 percent of seats in the state’s 630 junior colleges for SSC students on June 9, strategists of the ruling Congress party have hit upon the ATKT initiative to attract votes.
“Obviously elections are a factor behind this proposal, because a huge number of families will benefit from the ATKT scheme, which could translate into a large chunk of votes,” education researcher Kishore Darak told the media on July 17.
Vasant Kalpande, former chairman of MSBSHSE, also warns against hasty implementation of the ATKT proposal. “A proper study of the issue is needed before any decision having statewide ramifications is taken. ATKT is a feasible proposition for class X part-failures and is preferable to holding a supplementary exam within a month of the announce-ment of SSC results which would leave very little time for students to prepare. However, for class XII failures, the scheme remains a big question mark as most universities are autonomous institutions or governed by the Central government or University Grants Commission norms,” says Kalpande.
But as the pitch and din of election campaigning rises, voices of reason are seldom heard.
Huned Contractor (Pune)
Reverse movement
The liberal noises being made in New Delhi by the newly installed Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal about deregulating Indian education seem to have made no impact on the state government of Maharashtra, its educ-racy in particular. A newly constituted 21-member Kumud Bansal committee comprising academics, government officials, schools’ and parents’ representatives, among others, has been given the brief to recommend ways and means to regulate the admission processes and fees charged by private pre-primaries, and junior (Plus Two) colleges in India’s most industralised state (pop. 98 million).
Maharashtra’s school education minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil made an announcement to this effect on July 13. He said that the Bansal committee will work out a “comprehensive policy” for regulating fees and admissions into pre-primary and kindergarten schools and 630 junior colleges in the state.
Politicians and bureaucrats in the education ministry are particularly indignant that pre-primary education is completely unregulated. According to them, Mumbai’s estimated 845 pre- primaries are demanding huge capitation fees and arbitrarily fixing sky-high tuition fees, of upto Rs.5 lakh and Rs.3 lakh respectively.
The brief given to the Bansal Comm-ittee to bring hitherto unregulated pre-primary schools within the control of the state government is likely to enthuse Jayant Jain, promoter of the Forum for Fairness in Education, who has been petitioning the Bombay high court as well as the Supreme Court for the past 13 years to bring pre-primary education under the purview of government regulation. Although the petitions are sub judice, education ministry officials believe that the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Islamic Academy Case (2003) which established admission and fees regulation committees for private professional education colleges countrywide, serves as a model for regulating admissions and fees in the pre-primary (and K-12) education sector.
Even as the Bansal committee is racing to submit its initial report, the Maharashtra state government is determined that all aided and unaided primary, secondary and higher secondary schools including those affiliated with the CISCE, CBSE and International Baccalaureate (IB) examination boards, will have to get their fees approved by the proposed regulatory panels and cannot increase them without their approval.
Curiously, in India’s most industrialised state, even as regulations and controls imposed upon industry are being liberalised, in the education sector the reverse is happening.
Neha Ghosh (Mumbai)