CBSE conducts exams, not us: Edn dept reminds BJP

Saffron party claims city govt allows students to cheat

The city government on Sunday rejected as “false and baseless” BJP’s allegations that the city education department is encouraging students of state-run schools to resort to “cheating” and using “unfair means” to ensure high pass percentages in board examinations.

The education department, in a rebuttal, said that class 12 examinations are conducted by CBSE and not by the Delhi government.

“It is wrong to put aspersions on this national level exam. To say that these results are achieved through unfair practices is totally false and baseless since CBSE exams are not held in schools where the children study and evaluation is done by external evaluators,” said the department.

It said levelling such allegations means demeaning the hard work put in by students and teachers of government schools.

Education minister Kiran Walia also condemned BJP’s statement, saying it is “highly demeaning”.

“A political party has stooped so low as to propagate bundles of lies and carried out a baseless and malicious propaganda against Delhi government schools,” she said.

“This act is highly demeaning. It constitutes an attack on 16 lakh hard working students and more than 50,000 teachers of government schools,” she added.

On Saturday, city BJP chief Vijay Goel, quoting findings of a survey conducted by his party, had alleged “massive fraud” in the education department, and had claimed that often teachers are “forced” to keep on pushing students to the next level due to pressure from higher-ups even though they are not eligible to be promoted.

Goel had also accused the Delhi government of fudging attendance records of students.

The education department said neither any person or any organisation had approached it nor had it granted permission to anyone for such a survey.
“Our results are based on evaluation at all India level, and not on the basis of a concocting political party survey,” it replied.

Goel alleged that though the government should have increased the number of schools, considering increasing population, on the contrary at least 80 government schools have been shut down by the Delhi government in the past few years.
“Some 12,000 posts of teachers are lying vacant and no major recruitment drive has been carried out in the past 15 years,” he had said.