With Plus Two exams concluded and Class 10 exam commencing on Wednesday, the Lok Satta Party made a request to the Chief Minister to provide grace marks to students as continual power outage took a heavy toll on their studies. The party requested grace marks for students of all regions in Tamil Nadu except Chennai which suffers from comparatively little power outage.
“We have requested the government for grace marks as we feel that students of Chennai and other regions in the State were not given a level playing field. Grace marks were given to students of (Cyclone) Thane hit regions as schools were closed for months then. We want the government to do the same here,” said Sanmuga Anandham, organising secretary, Coimbatore.
Power cuts took a heavy toll on students in the city, with their usually long and mostly unscheduled duration.
“No doubt the outage will affect our marks as we could not study as when we wanted. I prefer to study at night but was frequently interrupted. I had no proper sleep and was under physical and mental stress,” said Divya, a Plus Two student.
“I would be a nice thing if we could get some extra marks. I initially planned to score between 85-90 per cent but it seems a distant dream now,” said Pradeep, a Class 10 student.
Not everyone is happy with the idea of awarding extra marks. Educationists and veteran teachers feel that the grace mark concept will spoil students.
“Every time someone finds excuses to ask for grace marks and it will only spoil them. One need not worry too much about marks and life is bigger than these numbers. Students must be taught to make the most of the limited resources rather than ask for extra marks,” said Satyanarayanan, principal, Mani’s Higher Secondary School.
Chief Educational Officer Gnanagowri said such things let students put the blame on others for their poor performance. “Let the children do their best and don’t make them rely on grace marks to score better. The government has provided all the facilities and they should make use of them. Many people take advantage of this and every year they start making excuses to grab grace marks,” she said.