ICSE, ISC results: Tough task ahead for Maharashtra education department

With all boards having different marking schemes due to the Covid-19 outbreak this year, achieving equivalence in scores for first-year junior college admissions

With all boards having different marking schemes due to the Covid-19 outbreak this year, achieving equivalence in scores for first-year junior college admissions is likely to be a tough task for the state education department.

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The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary education has decided to mark students for geography, the exam which was cancelled, as per the average for the remaining papers. For Class 10 students of CBSE, all papers were successfully conducted in the state and results would be declared as usual. ICSE students, meanwhile, have been marked for the cancelled papers on the basis of their best three scores and internals for the subject.

Officials at the education department said no decision has been made on this. “No such meeting or discussion has taken place at the government level yet,” said a senior official from the department.

In 2019, the Mumbai divisional board had received nearly 1.85 lakh applications from students for the general admission round. While 1.68 lakh of these were from the state board, the second highest number of applicants came from the ICSE board (7,881). With ICSE students scoring big, experts said the department needs to come up with a solution for state board students.

“The government should come up with a method to ensure the state board students do not lose out on prominent colleges. It should be done systematically to ensure that no one challenges it in courts,” said Basanti Roy, former secretary of the Mumbai divisional board.

Vaishali Bafna, who is a part of SYSCOM, a Pune based think tank, said, “The department needs to plan admissions well this year. The overall reservation for various categories is increasing year on year and there are fewer seats left for the open category. This will make competition for seats fiercer this year,” she said.

This year, the government has decided to increase the quota for students with special needs to 4% from 3%, while the quota for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes(SEBC) has been reduced from 16% to 12%, in accordance with the state rules. A total of 50% seats in junior colleges affiliated to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation would be reserved for students of civic body schools.