HS review awards sharp rise in marks in some cases:

 The marks of one student was found to have shot up from 238 to 346 when an instal
ment of review results was announced on Thursday night.: Shutterstock

SUBHANKAR CHOWDHURY | TT  |  28.08.21 : The review results of over half the higher secondary students have been announced and one student’s marks have gone up by over 100. Another’s have increased by over 60.

Officials of the state higher secondary council attributed the whopping rise in the marks, post-review, to an error in giving weightage to the scores from previous examinations.

The admission of the error will only add to the anxiety of many students who may have suffered because of this in a year when the state government has barred colleges and universities from conducting admission tests and asked them to screen students solely on the basis of marks.

The council had scrapped this year’s HS exams because of Covid and decided to give 40 per cent weightage to a student’s performance in the Class X board exams and 60 per cent to the Class XI annual exam marks.

The combined weightage was added to the score in the 30-mark practical (for lab-based subjects) or 20-mark project (for non-lab based subjects) to arrive at the final marks.

The marks of one student was found to have shot up from 238 to 346 when an instalment of review results was announced on Thursday night. The marks of another student went up to 335 from 272.

An official of the council said there could be more than one student whose marks had gone up by over 100 following the review.

“This is not a normal review as this year exams could not be held. In the normal review, we don’t see such a jump. It is a recalculation of marks. The candidates are now getting the scores that they ought to have received,” council president Chiranjeeb Bhattacharya said.

Saudipta Das, the general secretary of the collegium of assistant headmasters and assistant headmistresses, said the review results showed that the council had erred in weighting the scores of some students.

“Even the marksheet of the student whose score rose by 63 is not correct. The council did not add the 20 marks scored in the practical (to the aggregate). We fear many students were victims of such mistakes. Considering that state-aided colleges and universities will admit students based on marks, such mistakes can cost state board students dearly,” said Das.

An official of the council admitted that they did not add the practical score to the aggregate of the student whose marks had risen by 63.

Saugata Basu, the secretary of the government school teachers’ association, said an assessment of this year’s HS results justified the large number of review applications.

The HS results, published on July 22, showed a significant rise in the pass percentage, along with a sharp drop in the number of top graders.

“This is in contrast to the CBSE Class XII and ISC results, which saw a rise in top scorers. Now, it is emerging that they bungled in weighting the scores. We don’t know how the state board students will compete for admission to colleges?” Basu wondered.

In this year’s HS, the number of candidates with the O grade — between 90 and 100 marks — came down from 30,220 in 2020 to 9,013.

The number of A+ grade (between 80 and 89) recipients dropped to 49,370 from 84,746 last year.

The number of A graders (70-79) came down from 96,825 last year to 95,758.