Ailing students score big too

While writing her ICSE exams, the biggest distractions for Shruti Agrawal, 15, were her itching chickenpox boils.

While writing her ICSE exams, the biggest distractions for Shruti Agrawal, 15, were her itching chickenpox boils.

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Agrawal, a student of Thakur Public School at Kandivli, barely managed to hold herself together while writing her exams, but scored 90%. “I was shocked. I was expecting 80%,” said Agrawal, who wrote the exams in a separate room in her school.

With a raging fever and body cloaked in boils, it was a daily battle for Agrawal to even sit up. “I was constantly on medicines. I even cried one time,” said Agrawal, who couldn’t compare notes with friends or go for last-minute tuitions.

Her school arranged for separate seating for her and another student suffering from a contagious ailment.

Rajendra Jain, 15, who oscillated between hospital bed and exam centre, wrote his papers while suffering from typhoid. On Tuesday, he found out he had scored 83%. “I wanted more, but it is better than dropping a year,” said Jain.

Afflicted by high fever, sedated and given glucose, Jain’s precious hours for revising were spent confined to a bed. “It was painful to even read,” said Jain, a student of HVB Academy at Marine Lines.

For such students, schools and the board made special arrangements.

This year, 459 students with dyslexia appeared for the ICSE exams, with 43 scoring above 90%; 29 visually challenged students appeared, with eight scoring above 90%; three students wrote the exams from hospital, with three scoring above 90%.