BSEM to harvest over Rs. 10 lakhs from govt schools as fine for low percentage; Marksheets to be held up in case of default

IMPHAL, May 30: The Board of Secondary Education, Manipur, BSEM is to reap a rich harvest of Rs. 10,60,000 collected as fines this year from 530 high schools which could not achieve 30 percent pass percentage for three consecutive years during the years 2000 to 2003.

Students of these schools will not be allowed to obtain their original mark sheets for this year’s HSLC exam, results of which were declared recently, if the school authorities do not clear the fines imposed on them. The board will start issuing the mark sheets within the next few days, officials of the BSEM told this reporter.

Out of the 530 schools some schools are to pay double fines as their performance was low both in the first block year (2000, 2001 and 2003) as well as in the next block year (2001, 2002 and 2003).

The BSEM authorities imposed a fine of Rs. 2000 each on a total of 224 high schools which could not achieve 30 percent pass percentage in three consecutive years of 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Another 306 high schools which could not achieve the same for the next consecutive year 2001, 2002 and 2003 have also been asked to pay the same amount of fines, officials of the BSEM said.

Many of the high schools on whom fines were imposed for failing to produce 30 percent pass percentage in the three consecutive years 2000, 2001 and 2002 were again included in the BSEM record of not reaching the mark in the following three consecutive years 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Of the total 626 high schools affiliated to the board who enrolled students for the High School Leaving Certificates Exam, 224 schools could not reach the 30 percent in the block year 2000 to 2002 (2000, 2001 and 2002).

111 out of these 224 schools fined by the board are government run high schools, 53 aided government aided high schools while 60 are private schools.

In the block year 2001-03 (2001, 2002 and 2003), of the total 638 high schools 306 could not achieve 30 percent pass percentage.

Out of them, 136 were government schools, 77 were aided while the remaining 93 schools were private schools.

As per the norms of the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur, BSEM, high schools unable to touch 30 percent pass percentage consistently are liable to lose government recognition.

However, officials of the BSEM said that so far the board has not derecognized any of the schools but only imposed a fine of Rs. 2000 each on the schools as penalty.

After the declaration of results for this year’s HSLC exam, the authorities of the board announced a list of 530 schools for paying fines stating that if they do not clear the said amounts the mark sheets of the students who appeared in the HSLC exam 2008 would not be issued by the board.

There are altogether 225 high schools run by the state government under the state directorate of education (schools) and another 83 high schools run with grant-in-aid from the government. Some government teachers have also been deputed to these schools or else have been absorbed by the government on certain conditions.

Quite atrociously a majority of government high schools have been consistently unable to reach the prescribed BSEM standard in the HSLC exam.

The board framed the norms for derecognizing the schools with low pass percentage in the HSLC since from the very beginning the government and aided schools could not improve their positions.

If the norms be carefully followed, then most of the government and government aided schools will get their recognition cancelled as most of these school have been witnessing poor performance.

But so far the norms have been relaxed and the board has only been imposing a penalty.

Some private school also showed poor performance but it did not continue perpetually.

In this year’s HSLC exam 451 private schools recognized by the board sent out its students. The overall pass percentage in this year’s HSLC exam was 67.75 percent against which the overall pass percentage of the government schools was only 44.86 percent. The pass percentage of the aided schools was 35.17 percent.

Source: http://ifp.co.in/FullStory.asp?NewsID=2407