THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: More than 27,000 students from Kerala schools wrote this year’s SSLC examinations using a scribe for writing support, a finding that has triggered concerns over the provision’s misuse.
According to the response from the general education department to an RTI query, 27,325 students availed a scribe’s support to write the examinations that were held in March. This comes to around 6.5% of the 4,14,270 students who appeared for the SSLC exams. As many as 30,986 students had applied for the facility.
Amid concerns sounded from various corners, General Education Minister N Samsudheen said the department will look into the matter. “Scribe facility is given to students with disabilities and difficulties. We will examine whether the provision is being misused. As of now, there are no plans to change the norms,” he told TNIE.
As per a ‘Report on Persons with Disabilities in Kerala’ published by the department of economics and statistics in 2022, 2.6% of the state’s total population was found to be disabled. The study was conducted based on data collected through the National Sample Survey between July and December 2018.
A top department official maintained that the complex matter needed to be solved through a policy decision. He said the number of students availing scribes had seen a rise in recent years. “Scribes are provided to students who cannot write properly due to an intellectual or learning disability or some recent physical trauma.
A medical board comprising four doctors examines the students and recommends whether they need a scribe to write the exam or not. Once the medical board approves the request, the education department does not have much role in it,” said the official.
As per the officials, the medical board makes the recommendation based on a detailed examination through camps held at the district education officer’s office or the Samagra Shiksha Kerala block resource centres. To evaluate students with learning disabilities, a set of questionnaires is given to the board to mark the students’ responses, based on which a decision is taken.
“This is often done in the December-January period, that too for Class 10 students. A scientific method would be to make interventions at a much earlier age,” another official said.
In this year’s examinations, close to 16,000 students possessed disability certificates (40% or more disability), officials said the rest were likely to be students with intellectual or locomotor disability who struggle to write properly, or those who faced physical trauma like a fracture.
Among districts, Malappuram saw the most students, 7,193, availing scribes in the SSLC examinations this year, followed by Ernakulam (2,977), Thrissur (2,835) and Palakkad (2,482). Pathanamthitta was at the bottom of the list with 352 students.
In SSLC examinations, scribe is a writer appointed to aassist an examinee with a disability or those who underwent a physical trauma that makes writing challenging. The scribe reads out the questions to examinees and write exactly what they say. The person appointed as a scribe is usually a junior (Class 9 students in most cases). A medical board of four doctors examines students requesting a scribe and recommends if they need one.
