By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 14 May: Surprisingly, the performance of the Utkrishta Vidyalayas in the plains regarding CBSE results, which were declared on Friday, has been very poor as compared to the schools in the hills. Director General of Secondary Education, Banshidhar Tiwari, has expressed his unhappiness with this performance. It is reported that, in the plains, around 50 percent of school children from Utkrishta Vidyalayas failed the CBSE examinations, while the schools in the hills fared better with many children scoring maximum marks despite living a life of hardship in the hills.
After the CBSE results, the officials of the Education Department are particularly disappointed with the results of the Utkrishta schools, which are supposedly centres of excellence.
Tiwari held a review meeting, on Saturday, regarding this issue through video conferencing with all the district level education officers. During the meeting, Tiwari instructed the officials to ensure that the children prepare for the supplementary examinations and that the schools remain open for this even during the summer holidays. The supplementary examination is expected to be held in June.
Tiwari also observed that action will be taken against the teachers and principals of schools where the performance of the students has been disappointing. Sources also claim that instructions have also been issued to give adverse entry in the service records of such teachers. Tiwari, however, conceded that these schools had changed their board of examination to CBSE only this year, so a slight decline in the examination performance could be expected, but such a sharp decline was unforgivable.
It may be recalled that there are 39 such schools in the state where, around half the students could not pass class ten. At the same time, in 59 schools 50 percent or fewer children have passed class twelve. In 155 Atal Utkrishta Vidyalayas, only 5142 students out of 8,625 in class 10 and 6481 students out of 12,753 in class 12 have managed to pass. The government has spent crores of rupees and has shown the dream of providing quality education on CBSE pattern in these schools. The reality was revealed in the board result. The situation is that the result of these schools was 60.49 percent in the 10th and only 51.49 percent in the 12th.
Sources claim that one major reason behind poor performance of these schools located in the plains could be that most of the teachers posted there have political backing and therefore manage to get posting to convenient locations. This convenience also leads them to be casual and careless, thereby resulting in such a poor performance. It remains to be seen what action the government takes against such teachers or will still keep them posted in convenient locations. On the other hand, teachers with no political backing or those coming from ordinary background and posted in the hills seemed to have worked harder and have produced much better results.
Sources further claim that unless strict action is taken against the teachers responsible for the poor results and they continue to manage being posted in convenient locations due to political backing, the situation may not improve significantly in future too.
