E-Paper
6 lakh dropouts for UP Board high school exams this year
As per UP Board records, 31,78,305 students had taken admission in class 9 last year and had to pass and register for high school exams this year. However, 5,58,900 students either failed or skipped their high school exams (2022).
Above 6 lakh students dropped out before completing high school in 2022-23. The registration figures for the 2023 edition of UP Board high school exams indicate as much.
As per UP Board records, 31,78,305 students had taken admission in class 9 last year and had to pass and register for high school exams this year. However, 5,58,900 students either failed or skipped their high school exams (2022).
Adding last year’s Class 9 students and high school students who either failed or dropped out, the number of high school students for class 10 exams in 2023 should have been 37,37,205.
However, the board data suggests, that only 31,16,458 students registered for the exams.
While some suggest that a possible reason for figure mismatch for class 10 exam registration could be students who failed class 9 but even board officials feel it isn’t possible for such a large number of students to flunk home class 9 examinations. The only other reason, officials felt, could be fake registration in high school exams of 2022. But they feel that even if 2,61,011 students who dropped out of the examinations were all fake, the number of dropouts for 2023 exams still remains much higher.
UP Board secretary Divyakant Shukla cited strict anticopying measures of the board introduced over the past few years as the reason for this large number of “dropouts” before the high school examination.
“The strict measures introduced by the board has ensured that only serious and genuine students register for the high school and intermediate exams,” he said.
Shukla said that this phenomenon in not new and has been observed during the past few years since the various measures to root out mass copying and other measures introduced to ensure fair conduct of the class 10 and class 12 exams in the state.
Yogendra Singh, principal of KP Intermediate College, Civil Lines, Prayagraj, a government-aided secondary school, said: “Such large number of dropouts is baffling. I have not observed this in the past. At my school we only had up to 10% dropouts in class 10 registrations. We managed to make up through new admissions and by registering those class 10 students who failed this time.”
