Bhubaneswar, June 1: Students of the Satyabhama Devi College for Hearing Impaired in the city have achieved 100 per cent success in the Plus Two examinations, the results of which were announced today.

All the 54 female students passed the examination in the arts stream.

While six students each passed in the first and third divisions, the rest passed the examination in the second division. Run by the Satyabhama Devi Welfare Trust, the college has now witnessed 100 per cent pass results for three consecutive years.

The college is touted as the only arts college for the speech and hearing impaired in the country. A similar commerce college runs in Chennai.

Special aids are employed to impart training to the students, including speech therapy and teaching using sign language.

"We made sure that the concept of the students were cleared. The teachers are well trained, and they take care to ensure that the students understand what they are being taught. The teachers even give them extra lessons after classes to clear the students' doubts," said trust member Niroji Lakshmi Mohapatra. The college has 12 teachers.

The students are elated and thinking about their future course of action. "I want to appear for various government jobs and will start preparing from now, so that I am ready to take the tests after my graduation," said Shashi Bhushan Mohanty, a student.

The college will assist the students in filling up forms and getting admission in their preferred colleges.

The needs of the hearing impaired are different from others, and many believe that they need to attend colleges that are meant especially for them instead of the general institutions. "Colleges like these would help the differently-abled to pass their exams with ease. They would not have the pressure to battle with the mainstream students," said disability activist Asit Kumar Behera.

KISS scores high

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) has scored 100 per cent results in science, commerce and arts streams for the seventh year in a row in the Plus Two results. Around 1,200 students, including many belonging to the primitive tribal groups such as Lodha, Bonda, Kutia Kondh, and Dongaria Kondh, appeared the examination from the institute this year.

KISS is one of the largest residential institutes in the world - that is exclusively dedicated to the education of the tribal students. The institute, which had started in 1993 with 125 children, now provides accommodation to 25,000 tribal children belonging to 62 tribes of the state. These students can study right from kindergarten to postgraduation free of cost.

As many as 12,000 of its 25,000 students are girls.

"It is a rare feat to educate and groom tribal students from remote areas of the state and enable them to achieve 100 per cent results every year," said a teacher based in Bhubaneswar.