Municipal schools shine in GPA scores

Fall behind in overall performance among other schools

The corporate classroom framework introduced to the municipal schools in the State a couple of years ago has finally yielded result as a considerable number of students scored 10 on 10 grade point average in the recently released SSC results.

In a record, 303 students scored the highest GPA while it was only 49 students in 2017.

The Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department led by Minister P. Narayana has incorporated the result-oriented Advanced Foundation Course (AFC) and special training sessions into the regular curriculum. Under the AFC, the best performing students from all classes were picked up and given special training throughout the year. But that did not help municipal schools beat other government-run schools in achieving the best overall pass percentage.

With 2,375 students out of 24,746 (9.60%) unable to pass the examination, the department settled in the 10th position, almost at the bottom of the chart, among 11 school managements. Except aided schools, all others including private, BC welfare, model schools, AP residential schools, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, social welfare, tribal welfare, Zilla Parishad, government performed better and most of their students passed the examination.

The municipal teachers’ federation, which was disappointed at the overall poor performance of the municipal schools compared to other management schools, has demanded special classes for the students for supplementary examinations.

“It is very bad that the municipal schools are lagging residential schools. Also, only 35 of the 316 municipal schools have achieved 100 pass percentage. The department should take care of the students who failed in the examination before focussing on admissions for next year,” a representative of the federation said.

The only area where the municipal schools fared well in comparison to other schools is the number of students who scored 10 on 10 GPA. With 1.22% students securing the highest GPA, the schools stood in fifth place while the ZP schools stood in the seventh place.