FYJC admissions: Maharashtra government discusses entrance exams, increasing seats

After the state government cancelled Class 10 - SSC exams on Tuesday, it is now mulling various options for conducting first-year junior college (FYJC) admissions in a free and fair manner

After the state government cancelled Class 10 - SSC exams on Tuesday, it is now mulling various options for conducting first-year junior college (FYJC) admissions in a free and fair manner.

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State education minister Varsha Gaikwad on Wednesday held a meeting with education experts and officials of the education department, in which, several possible ways of conducting FYJC admission were discussed. Some options discussed included holding entrance exams for junior college admissions, increasing the number of seats at prominent junior colleges and calculating the performance of students for Class 10 based on their marks for two-three years.

“Several options were discussed. There was an opinion that since there will be no exams, a fair mechanism for admissions to colleges is needed. One of the ideas was conducting entrance exams in junior colleges where there is competition and more takers than seats. Sought after colleges are numerically smaller. In other colleges, admissions can be given to students easily as there is no fight for seats,” said an expert present at the meeting.

Every year, admissions to FYJC begin after the results of board exams are declared. While SSC students join junior colleges in the state, many from CBSE, ICSE, IB and other boards apply for seats too. In the state, admissions are conducted online in six regions- Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Nashik, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Amravati. In other parts of the state, offline admissions are held at the college level.

Experts are now worried that not having SSC exams might have long term repercussions on future careers of students.

“We are worried that this batch should not be termed as Covid batch because they did not have any exams. Similarly, students need to be realistically assessed and not having exams will make the task difficult for the state board. These students have studied all year and subjecting them to another uncertain format for admissions will be unfair,” said Basanti Roy, former secretary of the Mumbai divisional board.

“We already have a surge in the cut-offs every year. Now with internal assessments, we are worried that there might be too many high scorers and very few seats in comparison,” said the principal of a city-based junior college.

Possible scenarios for admission

-Calculation of average marks of students from their scores of the last 2-3 years. Students will then be given cumulative scores which will be considered for admissions

-Pre-admission entrance tests to be conducted by junior colleges or centrally by the education department. Scores of the exam to be considered for admissions.

-Increasing the number of seats in prominent junior colleges to accommodate more students