Bhubaneswar, Oct. 23: The school and mass education department has decided to conduct special coaching classes and camps for bright students and remedial classes for weaker students of Classes IX and X.

School headmasters have been asked to prepare a list of good performers in these classes. Special coaching sessions would be organised for them in non-residential camps at the block-level during vacations. A total of 628 such camps, two in each of the 314 blocks, would be conducted. “Apart from this, similar camps would be held in the municipal corporations and municipalities, as and when required,” said an official of the department.

Four schoolteachers would be engaged by the department at each camp and paid Rs 5,000 each as honorarium. This would be monitored by the inspectors of schools concerned. The expenses in this regard would be borne out of the Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan funds.

Initially, special attention would be given to 344 secondary schools and 30 district headquarters schools, and the former would be developed into “replicable model secondary schools”.

In case of academically weaker students in Classes IX and X, remedial coaching classes would be conducted to improve their standard. “In these classes, the ‘hard spots’ or difficult sections of various subjects would be discussed and solutions would be offered by the subject-experts from the board of secondary education,” the official said.

The department had earlier directed all schools to conduct monthly tests in order to assess the progress rate of the students. More emphasis would be given to the writing ability of the students. Further, pre-tests and tests are now compulsory in all government schools so that only eligible students get the chance to appear for the matriculation examination. The tests aim at familiarising students with the question pattern.

This year, the matriculation results stood at 66.75 per cent, falling by five per cent from the previous year. Out of nearly 4.76lakh candidates, who had appeared for the annual high school certificate examination this year, around 2.95 lakh students passed in regular, ex-regular and correspondence courses. More than 1.36 lakh students failed to clear the exam and 193 schools recorded nil results.

A total of 54,666 students secured first division, 68,674 got second position and 1,60,906 got third division marks. For ex-regular students, the pass percentage was 36.02 per cent. As compared to 439 schools last year, 274 schools registered 100 per cent results.