DHARMAPURI: In a rude shock to a 15-year-old girl who scored 450 out of 500 marks in Class X public examination, the result for which was announced on Friday, she was mentioned as a transgender by the Directorate of Government Examination in the records.
P Sangeetha from Nirkundhi near Pennagaram studied in a Government Girls Higher Secondary School and appeared for SSLC exam on March from that school. She secured 450 marks out of 500 in total, obtaining 95 in Tamil, 86 in English, 78 in Maths, 93 in Science and 98 in Social Science.
“She saw news channels showing her name in the transgender category and broke down,” said her father P Palaniappan (40). “I don’t know what happened in the morning until I received call from reporters from Chennai who narrated the incident. I explained to them that my daughter is a female. Due to the mistake committed by the School Education Department, my daughter got upset in the morning. Now she fears that her friends would tease her,” he said.
Despite the incident, the parents have not approached the Educational Department on Friday.
School headmaster V Anbazhagan said a female computer staff had mistakenly assigned her as third gender last year. It was noted later and he asked the female staff to change it, but it seems that was not done, he said.
“The girl also signed the form after filling the details of nominal roll before it was uploading online in the end of last year. But the teachers failed to check it and they simply uploaded the data, which resulted in this trouble,” Dharmapuri Chief Education Officer M Ramasamy said. After an inquiry, action will be taken against the persons concerned, he said.
“In the mark sheet, Sangeetha will be mentioned as female,” the Dharmapuri Chief Education Officer added.