Second chance in June itself for students failing Class IX, XI

PANAJI: The Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has put before its executive council a proposal to allow students who have failed in Class IX and XI to answer the supplementary exam in June, irrespective of the number of subjects in which they have failed. The board’s chairperson, Ramkrishna Samant, said that if it is approved by the council at its meeting later this month, the decision will be implemented from the current academic year 2019-20.
“At present, only those students of Class IX and XI who fail in either one or two subjects are eligible to appear for the June supplementary exam.We have proposed this change as we do not want students to lose an entire academic year due to having to wait till the exam is held the next year. We want to give them a second opportunity,” said Samant.
The exam will be conducted by the schools itself, Samant added.
Samant said the proposal is not related to the belief that higher number of students are being kept back by schools in these classes so that institutes can register a better pass percentage at the Class X and Class XII board exams.
After the state registered its best ever pass percentage of 92.47% at this year’s Class X exams, Samant had said the ‘filtration of students’ at Class IX could have contributed to this figure.
As per the education department’s statistics, 27,688 students enrolled in Class IX during the 2017-18 academic year, of which only 18,684 appeared for the Class X exam in 2018-19. This indicates a dropout rate of 32% in Class IX.
Goa Board’s 2013 data had shown that city schools are likely to see a bigger chunk of up to 50% of its Class IX students repeat the class.