Government schools catchingup with private schools

In Belgaum, Chitradurga, Mandya and Haveri, they have performed well

January 23, 2013 08:21 am | Updated December 17, 2016 03:42 am IST - Bangalore

If you want to send your child to a government school, pick one in Belgaum, Chitradurga, Mandya or Haveri rather than in Bangalore. This seems to be the message from a new district-wise aggregation of seven years’ data from the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) between 2004-05 and 2010-11.

In Belgaum, Chitradurga, Mandya and Haveri, government school students have consistently performed as well as — occasionally even better than — those in private schools in the annual SSLC exams.

This is not due to private schools in these areas doing worse than in the rest of the State, for their pass percentages match the State average.

This suggests that government schools in these districts are clearly doing something right in the teaching-learning process.

In contrast, the gap in performances between government and private schools is the widest in the Bangalore Urban district over the entire period. This is due to a marked underperformance from government schools, rather than extraordinary performance of private schools. The only other district where such a trend is seen is Bidar.

The data is viewable as a visualisation on http://sslc.klp.org.in. The site was set up by the Karnataka Learning Partnership, a non-governmental organisation working on education.

Visitors can view information on district-wise performances of government and private schools; performance across subjects such as English, Kannada and Mathematics; and relative performances of girls and boys. In the recent years, pass percentages are in the range of 80-95 across the State. This performance has improved over the years for which the data is compared.

However, there is a wide disparity in performances between various districts. Consistently high results have come from Uttara Kannada and Udupi, logging pass percentages in the high 80s and low 90s.

On the other hand, Bidar has performed worse than the rest of the State over the years. Indeed, its pass percentage has even dipped under both private and government schools. For instance, in government schools, only two out of every three students passed in 2010-11; compare this to the higher 2004-05 figure, when three out of four children passed. But Gulbarga (which had comparable figures in 2004-05) and other districts in the region have improved their performance over the years.

Overall, private schools do better than government schools. While private schools do have a fairly high pass percentage across the State, those in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi have done exceptionally well, logging numbers as high as 95 per cent in the recent past. However, there is a large disparity in performances of government schools.

Many districts have girls outperforming boys. Interestingly, in the cases where boys do perform better than girls, it is overwhelmingly in government schools.

New norms prevent teachers from evading SSLC evaluation Nowhere is this clear than in Bangalore (both Urban and Rural). Over the years, boys consistently outperform girls, but only in government schools. In private schools, girls have outdone boys here. However, the difference in performance is not very large, typically within five to 10 percentage points. The site will soon be updated with 2012 data as well, said Gautam John, who heads Karnataka Learning Partnership.

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