A Government Order (GO) on Thursday directing the Director of General Education to hold improvement exams for the 2021 batch of Plus One students and another notification on 79 additional batches have cleared confusion in the higher secondary education sector in the Malabar region.
The order said that the students could not attend schools because of the pandemic and other natural calamities, and that they had not been able to study properly in classrooms. Thus, holding improvement exams will be necessary, it added. Earlier, when the notification for the exams for the 2021 batch was issued, it was announced that improvement exams would not be held.
According to sources, there had been complaints about Plus One exams after the results were declared. Many students could not appear for the exams because of COVID-19, and some others scored less than expected marks. This led to the demand to give them another chance through improvement exams.
Meanwhile, the order on additional Plus One batches too has come as a relief for students who could not secure admissions even after scoring high marks in Malabar districts. Government higher secondary schools in the region with good infrastructure will benefit from these temporary batches. Most of the additional seats will be in humanities and commerce streams and some in the science stream. A notification on the allocation of seats to various schools is expected in the coming days. Guest lecturers will have to be appointed to cater for these batches.
Many students had opted for the open school system through the State Council for Open and Lifelong Education-Kerala, as they could not get admissions even one-and-a-half months after the launch of Plus One classes. Since the last date for registering with the open school system is December 15, it was feared that any delay in launching new batches would lead to more following suit. It was pointed out that students who had already secured admissions were not able to opt for changing of schools or combination of streams because of the delay in the launch of additional batches.
