The sheer number of pre-university (PU) students who bagged full scores (2,239) and the overall performance of candidates has education experts and heads of degree colleges worried. Many were of the opinion that the PU results, which were announced on Tuesday, appear to be inflated.
Heads of many private higher education institutions that The Hindu spoke to have decided to reject these scores. Most have already completed the admission process based on a candidate’s past performance, while others conducted their own admission tests.
Rishikesh B.S., Associate Professor, Azim Premji University, suggested that universities should assess attributes for higher education rather than these marks. “Whatever formula used to calculate the marks, they are meaningless as learning has been suboptimal in the last two academic years,” he said. He added that the grading system would have been a better indicator for this academic year.
However, a Vice-Chancellor of a State-run university said that they would use the II PU marks as they did not want the DPUE’s exercise to be futile.
He did acknowledge the possibility of multiple candidates, all with the high scores, vying for a limited number of seats. “If some colleges see high demand with many applicants, we will ask them to immediately conduct a multiple choice question test to decide which students should get the seat,” he said.
R. Snehal, Director of the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE), said that the department has tried to provide students a fair assessment of what they could have achieved. “There could however be a slight variation in the marks as we have considered their SSLC and first PU scores,” she said. She also pointed out that many of these students who have got full marks have consistently done well in SSLC and first PU.
A majority of the students who bagged 600/600, were from Dakshina Kannada district. As many as 445 students from this district got full scores. In Bengaluru South, 303 students aced the examination with perfect scores, followed by Bengaluru North (261)
Out of the 1,478 students with special needs who registered for the examination, 84 students bagged distinction, while 603 got first class and 459 got second class.
