Bihar Class 12 results: Nitish Kumar govt faces flak over failure of 65% candidates; students, parents in shock

Amid statewide anger over the abysmal pass percentage in the intermediate examination, the Bihar government is struggling for appropriate responses to calm down the rising tempers. Although the state government is trying to justify the pathetic pass percentage it is not going down well with the students, parents, academia and even political parties.

Sensing a political opportunity, the BJP was quick to call upon the student community to take to the streets to protests against the dismal results. However, the police resorted to baton charge to disperse the disappointed students protesting in front of the Intermediate Council on Wednesday.

This was the first examination after the infamous topper scam last year which exposed the corruption within the state’s examination system.

The results this time has managed to shock even the topper in the science stream, Khusboo Kumari who is not content with her marks. She got 86 percent but was hoping to do much better. While she is hesitantly accepting congratulatory calls, Khushboo asks how she would get admission in any top rank Delhi University college.

She, in a way, sums up what a meagre 35 percent students who passed this time around must be thinking about their future. But the worse does not stop here. Just think about the over eight lakh students who have been declared unsuccessful. They constitute around 65 percent of the total students who took the examination.

The worst result was in the science stream in which only 30.11 percent students were declared successful. The pass percentage for Arts and Commerce were 37.13 percent and 73.76 percent respectively.

To the disbelief of many, Congress leader and state education minister Ashok Chaudhary congratulated Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) and the students for the ‘historic’ result. He, in fact, tweeted the same and is being trolled since then.

This is the worst result after 1997 when only 14 percent students passed the intermediate examination. But the success ratio kept increasing after that. Last year 62.19 percent cleared the examination preceded by 87.45 percent in 2015.

Pass percentage in the Bihar intermediate examination in the last five years

• 2012 – 90.74 percent • 2013- 88.04 percent • 2014 – 76.17 percent • 2015 – 87.45 percent • 2016 - 62.19 percent • 2017 – 35.25 percent

But varying excuses for the poor results is further showing the state’s education system in a pathetic light. Talking to ETV BSEB chairman Anand Kishore said, “We were very strict this time. Even bar codes were used to deter any wrongdoing. The whole process was very transparent and strict.”

But when pointed out that even CBSE had been using such practices and what this has to do with the pass percentage, he inadvertently admitted the corrupt practices for the higher pass percentage earlier. “See, we all will have to look into it. We should provide better education and this is the responsibility of all of us.”

Many parents and political parties have raised eyebrows when answer sheets of the intermediate examination were sent to middle school teachers for evaluation because the class 12 teachers were on strike at that time. Now after the results are out, this issue has gained momentum. Even Middle School Teachers Association president Kedar Pandey has demanded re-evaluation of copies admitting the fact that those who are supposed to teach class 8 student can’t check copies of a class 12 student.

Apart from that, model answer sheets provided to the evaluators were full of errors. Model answer sheet for physics contained eight wrong answers out of the total 50 questions. “When 15 percent answers are wrong, how can a student hope for a better result?” asked state BJP leader Vinod Narayan Jha.

But Anand Kishore claims that this was reported earlier and instructions were passed on to evaluators to give full marks against which wrong answers were provided in the model answer sheet.

The BJP lashed out at the Nitish Kumar government for deteriorating educational standards and demanded the removal of Chaudhary. Senior BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav termed the intermediate results as one of the indicators of the state government’s failure.