The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Persons with disabilities prove their mettle

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Saturday, May 31, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Persons with disabilities prove their mettle

Deepa H Ramakrishnan

— Photo: M.Vedhan

JOYOUS OCCASION: SSLC topper of Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary School for the Blind V.A.Nargees Begum being congratulated by her brother Idayathullah in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI: This topper of Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary School for the Blind knows exactly what she wants to do in life. “I love mathematics but I cannot teach the subject since it requires drawing figures. So, I want to teach English, another subject that I like,” said V.A.Nargees Begum, who has scored a total of 453 in the SSLC exam.

All 12 students of the school, who took the exam, have passed and seven of the girls got above 400 marks.

Nargees, who was born visually impaired, shares her passion for English with her brother, Idayathullah, who has a similar disability. “He has applied for BA English literature in Loyola College. After he completes the degree, he wants to learn music and then become a music director… he plays the keyboard,” she explained.

She was just not able to contain her happiness at her score. “My friend Chitra and I were worried about our marks. She got 438 marks and wants to become a lawyer.” Nargees has scored 95 marks in English, 95 in science, 87 in maths, 85 in Social sciences and 91 marks in Tamil.

Saravanan of Andhra Mahila Sabha’s Orthopaedic Educational Centre, with 425 marks, was the school topper in the exam resulted declared on Friday. A total of 10 students wrote the exam of which six passed.

“The children lost marks in the maths paper. That’s because they find it difficult to hold geometry instruments and scales to do graph and geometry. Those two subjects add up to 20 marks, which other students finish easily,” said a staff member.

Visually challenged student R.R. Pradeep of St Louis Institute for Deaf & the Blind on Canal Bank Road in Adyar got 420 marks out of 500. The visually impaired section has a 94 per cent pass percentage and in the hearing impaired section 12 students out of 16 passed. At the Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary School for the Deaf, where the students have exemption to learn only one language, all the 15 girls who wrote the exam have passed. All the students this year studied in Tamil medium and S. Lavanya, who got 365 out of 400 came school first. She also got a centum in maths.

The students write only four papers, the language of the medium of instruction, maths, science and social science. After their Plus-Two, if they want, they are taught English and a vocational subject. They then write the SSLC exam for English before moving on to college, explained a staff member.

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