Calcutta, Feb. 17: After proudly announcing a record rise in the number of Madhyamik examinees — 140,000 — last year, the board declared a record dip in 2007.

A total of 6,74,657 students will take this year’s exam. Last year, 90,000 more had appeared for Madhyamik.

Board officials admitted that the dip in the number of examinees had never been so sharp in the 39 years of its existence. “We are doing the needful to find out the factors responsible for the sharp fall in the number of examinees,” said Ujwal Basu, president, West Bengal Board of Secondary Examinations.

The examinations will begin on Tuesday.

A preliminary probe by the board has revealed that over 13,000 Madhyamik schools across the state tightened their screening after the pass percentage dropped by 5.56 per cent last year.

The schools allowed only those students to appear in the board exam who were most capable of clearing it.

“We’ll call a meeting with the heads of schools after the examination to look into this year’s drop,” Basu said.

However, sources in the education department attributed last year’s rise in the number of examinees to a government policy to allow as many students as possible to take the exam. “It was held only a few months before the Assembly elections and the government had to show its success in promoting school education.”

The drop in the success rate, however, jolted the government. After the results were declared in May, the board directed schools to take steps to ensure academic standards and warned them of cancellation of affiliation if there were too many failures. “This prompted them to adopt a stricter procedure in the selection of students,” an official said.

Basu cited another factor behind the drop in the number of examinees — rural parents’ reluctance to let their children study beyond Class VIII.

He admitted, though, that the trend was not unique for this year.