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Most Mumbai schools fail more than 50 students in Class 9, says edu dept
Prominent schools in the city are among those which have failed 100 to 300 class nine students in the academic year, 2015-16, revealed data collected by the deputy directorate of education, Mumbai region recently.
Prominent schools in the city are among those which have failed 100 to 300 class nine students in the academic year, 2015-16, revealed data collected by the deputy directorate of education, Mumbai region recently.
The data showed that although the overall pass percentage in Class 9 in the city has improved to 88.42% in 2015-16 from 83% in the previous year, the number of students failing in many schools is still more than 50, which is the limit set by the department.
BB Chavan, deputy director of education said that they will send show-cause notices to schools failing to stick to the limit. “Irrespective of the number of students in the class, we seek explanations from schools failing more than 50 students,” said Chavan.
The exercise is being conducted to check schools failing large numbers of students in Class 9 to achieve 100% results in the Class 10 board exam.
According to the data provided by the directorate, a well-known school in Borivli had an 85% pass percentage in 2014-15, but as 345 out 409 students failed in 2015-16, the Class 9 pass rate dropped drastically to 15%. Despite repeated attempts, school authorities were unavailable for comment. Another school, Francis D’Assissi School, Borivli, had 107 failing in a class of 487 students in 2014-15 and 67 from 452 students failing in 2015-16. Though the performance of students has improved compared to last year, it still exceeds the limit set by the department.
“The department needs to reconsider the limit. This school has a large number of students, so 50 students is less than 20% of the total number of students,” said Father Francis Swamy, jointsecretary of the Archdiocesan Board of Education that governs the school. The school principal could not be reached. The data shows that VN Sule School, Dadar, had 60 of 340 students failing. But the school has denied the figure. “We must have failed barely five to six students. The report is not showing the correct figures,” said Satish Nayak, trustee of the school. Similarly, two Kandivlibased schools also had more than 50 students failing in Class 9. The data shows that one school had 82 students detained in Class 9, out of 390 last academic year, while, 75 out of 420 were detained this year. The other school had 61 students out of 439 detained this year.
Some of the schools said that the no-fail policy is to be blamed for students performing poorly in Class 9. “Since the policy was introduced seven years ago, students are lacking basic knowledge, their reading and writing skills are falling,” said Radha Nair, principal, St Francis School, Malad, that saw 64.4% of its students passing Class 9.
