Campus connect: Class 10 students struggle with FYJC admissions

On June 8, the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education declared the results for State Secondary Certificate (SSC) exam.

Pune recorded its lowest pass percentage in the last eight years, a change in syllabus being attributed as one of the reasons for the overall poor performance.

A change in marking - internal marks given by the schools not being counted - is now hanging over the admission process to first year junior college for at least 40,000 students in the city.

Non-state board students of CBSE and ICSE have the benefit of these internal marks, which will allow them an advantage at the time of FYJC admission and cutoff percentages.

CBSE and ICSE students get 20 internal marks for all subjects from the school. 

A meeting was held by state education minister Vinod Tawde on Tuesday, with principals of state board schools, parents and officials. He had promised that the state would ensure no injustice to SSC students during the FYJC admission process. 

“We got suggestions from principals that if SSC students are scored based only on the written exam, only those marks should be considered for the admission process for students across all boards. Now we are trying to consult with the Ministry of human resource and development and also with non-state board officials to find a solution,” Tawade said. 

The educationists’ view

Students who want to take admissions for Class 11 (FYJC) needs to go through the online centralised admission process (CAP).

Part 1 of the form is already out, but part 2, without which the admission procedure cannot be completed is delayed. Though no official will say it, the above issue is clearly a factor.

“Considering only written marks of non-state board students, won’t be possible to implement and there are many hurdles. Scrapping the internal marks for the SSC exams was taken in a hurry. There is an urgent need to find a better solution. While the number of non-state board students is only higher in cities like Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, in the rest of the state, majority of the students are from the SSC board. Admission process will be delayed this year,” is how Vasant Kalpande, former chairman of the state board, views the scenarion. 

Rajendra Zunjarrao, principal, Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce, says, “The decision taken by the state education department was good, but all stakeholders should have been taken into consideration, “ is Zunjarrao’s view.

The Modern college princiapl does offer a solution - a computerised calculation which converts marks out of 80 for students from other boards in to and estimation of what it would be out of 100.

“It can be done easily with the help of new modern computerized technology and so the admission process would start,” he says. 

Parents in the loop

While parents of both – SSC board and non-state board students are currently worried, Kamlesh Malpani, whose son scored above 90 per cent in the CBSE board, says, “It would be not right to consider only written exam marks percentage of our students, as it will drop the percentage down and we certainly will not get good colleges. The government should have thought about all this well in advance before taking such a decision, which affects thousands of students.”

Another parent, Satish Jadhav, whose daughter passed from the SSC board, says, “In any case SSC students will be left behind. There is no solution to this problem and I would suggest that, learning from this year’s lesson, the government should start the internal marks process again from next year.”