There is good news for CBSE Class XII students who are yet to recover from the shock of having to tackle a very tough mathematics paper and the impact that would have on their engineering dreams.
In a letter sent to Kerala CBSE School Managements’ Association, CBSE Chairman Vineet Joshi has sought to allay the worries of students while promising to keep their best interests in mind.
“The Chairman has also said that a meeting of subject experts will be convened shortly to evaluate and discuss the paper.
“The grievances lodged by the association and others from across the country will be forwarded to the experts,” Indira Rajan, State general secretary of the Kerala CBSE School Managements Association, told The Hindu .
Ms. Rajan has also taken up the shortcomings with regard to improvement opportunities for CBSE students. As of now, students can clear subject papers, including mathematics, on scoring 33 marks.
But the fact remains that students should secure at least 50 per cent marks in mathematics to be eligible for admission to engineering course in the State.
“Students who fail can take the improvement exam in a matter of months giving them the opportunity to cross the 50 per cent marks barrier and have a crack at engineering course.
“The irony is that students who actually pass but fall short of the halfway bench mark will have to wait one full academic year to take the improvement exam. This is a travesty of justice, which should be addressed at the earliest,” Ms. Rajan said.
She had sent a letter to Mr. Joshi a day after the Mathematics paper based on feedbacks about the paper collected from subject faculties in schools across the State.
The letter spelt out the worries of students and parents that a tough paper would have on plans for higher studies.
The letter pointed out that more than 35 per cent of questions in all three sets of question papers were high on the scale of difficulty.
“The question paper was not a balanced one with easy, average, and difficult questions. As a result none of the students could perform well and were disappointed,” Ms. Rajan wrote in the letter.
Similar problem
She pointed out that a similar problem surfaced last year as well and warned that it will prompt students to switch over to State syllabus considering that the question paper and valuation is more liberal there.
