Guwahati, May 9: The Assam government will form a committee comprising vice-chancellors of four universities to advise the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (Seba) on awarding grace marks in the High School Leaving Certificate (matric) examination.
Education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said in the Assembly that the committee would comprise vice-chancellors of Gauhati University, Dibrugarh University, Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University and Kumar Bhaskar Varma Sanskrit and Ancient Studies University. Sarma had created a flutter yesterday by saying that Seba, in consultation with successive state governments, used to dole out grace marks generously in matric to inflate the overall pass percentage.
He said the government has now decided to constitute the committee as it wants to do away with the practice of unnaturally increasing the pass percentage.
An official source told The Telegraph today that in a meeting of education boards organised by the Union ministry of human resource development in New Delhi on April 24, which was attended by a senior Seba official, it was agreed to stop the marks moderation policy (awarding grace marks generously), which leads to inflation of scores and consequently increases cut-offs during undergraduate admissions.
"The grace marks would, however, continue for selective cases like when only a few marks are required to qualify," the source said.
Sarma yesterday said this practice has been going on since 2001 and it led to the ever-increasing pass percentage, which crossed 60 whereas the actual pass percentage has remained below 30.
According to the minister, successive governments had adopted this practice in order to show that education had improved in the state during their tenure. To buttress his point, Sarma today said that in 2010 and 2011, 18 grace marks were awarded by Seba.
The Opposition Congress and former chief minister Tarun Gogoi today dismissed Sarma's disclosure about grace marks as baseless and sought a CBI inquiry to verify the facts. Former education minister and Congress leader Sarat Borkotoky said by making such a statement Sarma had insulted all stakeholders of the education system. "His statement is false. The HSLC exam is independently controlled by Seba. The board only informs the education minister about dates of examination and declaration of results. There was no political intervention in the functioning of Seba during Congress rule," he said.
Congress leader and former minister Pradyut Bordoloi said since 2001 lakhs of students have passed the HSLC exam and by making such statements, Sarma had insulted them.
