THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: School athletes have complained of being handed out a raw deal through the revised guidelines for the award of grace marks for sports in the SSLC and higher secondary examinations. According to the revised norms, a student who was entitled to get 15% grace marks (72 marks) for bagging first prize at a national-level sports event would now see the benefit being reduced to 25 marks. Besides, the winners of the first three prizes at the national level would be awarded the same 25 marks.
In a sharp deviation from convention, the new norms do not prescribe any grace marks for participation in national sports events. “Earlier, participation at the national level would fetch up to 48 marks. Doing away with it completely would affect the prospects of students like me who had to skip classes for many days owing to rigorous training in the run-up to the event,” said a higher secondary student.
In team events, the revised norms prescribe grace marks only to students whose teams have won first four places at the state level. At present, a student, whose district team did not win the first four places at the state level, would not be entitled to any grace marks despite being selected to participate at the national level.
Departmental Physical Education Teachers’ Association president Sunil Kumar M said the decision to cut down the grace marks for winners at the state level has also come as another blow to the students. “Earlier, winners of the first three prizes were entitled to grace marks of 24, 18 and 12 respectively, and winners of prizes ranging from fourth to sixth were awarded 10 marks. This has been cut down to 20, 17, 14 and 7 for the first four places respectively,” he said.
Sunil said many students from the state were selected and trained for National School Games conducted by the School Games Federation of India (SGFI). However, the event could not be held this year due to a dispute over selection of office- bearers of SGFI. The physical education teachers association has demanded that students who have been selected to represent the state should be given at least 10 marks as grace marks taking into account the days spent for training.
Meanwhile, an official of the general education department said the schools have already begun the process of uploading the mark details as it by schools before April 27. So any last-minute changes may not be possible, he said.