CHENNAI: There were a lot of broken hearts when the Higher Secondary results were posted by the Directorate of Government Examinations on Thursday, as students who were expecting ‘sure shot’ centums were done in by Physics.
Usually one of the more innocuous of the ‘major’ science subjects, the paper which had differently worded questions this year, rocked the centum boat, with only a meagre 124 centums being awarded, as opposed to 2,710 last year.
Besides this, the results were fairly standard — with the pass percentage staying steady at 90.6 per cent, with a marginal rise in students appearing. The students in Chennai schools showed up badly in the ranks tally, as their counterparts from districts bagged top honours.
The Physics downer will drive cut-offs of engineering and medicine down. “The cut-off will be much lower for all the competitive courses, so my father has agreed to ask for a re-evaluation,” said Suhasini S, a student of a city school who managed 195/200 in Physics. This brought back memories of 2013 when the same thing had happened — only 36 centums were awarded that year.
“We have been receiving lots of requests for re-evaluation and re-calculation for the Physics and Maths papers since the exam ended and all the requests will be attended to as per the norms,” a senior official with the Directorate of Government Examinations told Express.
Ironically, they needn’t have worried about their Maths marks. A whopping 9,710 students managed to secure centums in Maths.
A few Physics teachers like Abu Thaker see it as a step in the right direction, saying this is a positive sign as students will start to move away from guides and tuition centres and start listening to teachers to learn concepts.
Toppers L B Nivetha (Coimbatore) and J Pavithra (Tirupur), who scored 1192, said they wanted to pursue Chartered Accountancy. Joint second rank was bagged by Vigneswaran S E, Pravin R, Saranram M and Vidyawarshini E. All four scored 1190 and were from science group.