SSLC, PU results show poor quality of BBMP schools, colleges

Students got textbooks late; shortage of permanent teachers

 There’s nothing much to cheer for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in the SSLC and II PU results released last week.

 The corporation’s schools have fared poorly, with a pass percentage of 41.18 which is a steep drop from 50.32 in 2016. Of the 1,418 students who appeared for the SSLC examination this year, only 584 cleared it successfully.
The pass percentage of PU colleges also shows a downward trend, dipping from 61 to 57.57.

BBMP runs 33 high schools and 13 PU colleges. S G Raveendra, special commissioner for education, BBMP, said he has called a meeting of principals of all corporation high schools and pre-university colleges to seek an explanation. He said students in BBMP schools tend to do poorly in language papers. “Urdu and Tamil students, whose mother tongue is not Kannada, tend to find the language difficult,” he said.

Raveendra said they wanted to conduct remedial classes for weak students. “I had asked all principals to send me a list of students who scored below 50% in the school-level exams so that we could give them extra classes. I had even spoken to some private degree colleges and they were willing to spare their students for helping our students free of cost. But they never sent me a list,” Raveendra said.

In the case of pre-university colleges, he admitted that students had received textbooks too late in the academic year. “Because of issues with the tender, we were not able to provide textbooks on time last year. This time, we are being cautious and we will provide everything on time,” he said.

A teacher in a corporation school attributed the dipping pass percentage to shortage of permanent teachers. “We don’t have permanent teachers for Science and Mathematics which students find difficult. The corporation provides shoes, uniforms and textbooks but if there are no quality teachers, the results will not improve,” the teacher said.

The special commissioner said they had enough teachers as the corporation has employed the services of 563 outsourced teachers through an agency. As for recruiting permanent teachers, he said it was a policy decision left to the government.