HYDERABAD: What happens when school managements are given complete freedom to decide 20 per cent of marks of their own their students in the final exams? The Telangana government made it possible for schools to do so through the newly-introduced ‘internal marks’ system. Not a surprise that around 97 per cent of the top scorers in Class X final exams are from private schools while merely three per cent are from government-run schools.
A total of 1,387 students obtained 10 GPA (grade average point) and of them, 1,357 are from private schools. None from government and municipal schools managed to secure top score this year.
However, such a huge gap between private and government schools came as no surprise to the authorities. “This was expected,” said an official of the school education department. Several teachers’ unions had raised concerns over ‘internal’ marks when the government decided to implement the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) which allows schools to award 80 per cent of marks for overall performance of students in the entire academic year. They said private schools could misuse their power to grant more marks to their own students. However, the government had to go ahead with it as it was too late to withdraw it in the middle of the academic year.