What was the Ruby Rai controversy?
A year after a picture of people climbing the high walls of an examination centre in Vaishali district to pass on chits to examinees shocked the nation, the 2016 intermediate exam topper in humanities, Ruby Rai, hit the headlines with her inability to answer basic questions posed by reporters on her subjects. One of the answers stood out: “Prodikal (Political) Science teaches cooking”. As many as 21 people, including the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) chairman, his wife, and Ruby Rai were sent to jail, hundreds of BSEB officials transferred from the headquarters, registration of over 200 schools cancelled. Patna Commissioner Anand Kishor was put in charge of the board.
What preventive measures did the Board take?
Mr. Kishor took several stringent steps, from introducing bar code on answer sheets to concealing students’ identity to installing CCTV cameras, imposing Section 144 on the days of the exams, deploying heavy police personnel to regular visits of ‘flying squads’ at the exam centres. In results announced on May 31, 64% students failed to pass the Class XII exam. As many as 654 schools failed to produce even a single successful candidate. Authorities claimed all this was proof that only deserving students passed this year.
Then what went wrong this year?
Two days after the results, humanities topper Ganesh Kumar from Samastipur inflicted a Ruby Rai rerun on people. On camera, he failed to hit even the basic notes of music in a subject in which he had got 83% marks; this, amidst claims by some students of having cracked the all-India IIT-JEE tests and yet failing in their BSEB intermediate exams, and of others that they had received marks in subjects they hadn’t even appeared in. The topper was also found to have fudged his age. Ganesh and three others have been arrested and sent to jail.
Is there a systemic issue at fault?
Experts say that apart from rampant corruption in the BSEB, the State’s education system is in a mess, with teacher absenteeism in higher secondary schools as high as 29%.
The Nitish Kumar government’s decision to appoint teachers on contract while abolishing the post of Assistant Teachers is often faulted for marring the quality of education. Against around 27.5 million students, there are only 5,00,000 teachers, of whom 4,00,000 are on contract. Even basic infrastructure is woefully inadequate: the State needs at least 60,000 more classrooms.
