Cut-off down to 55%, yet seats vacant in schools

Karam Prakash

Tribune News Service

Patiala, June 24

Despite drastic drop in the eligibility percentage, a criterion for admission in nine meritorious schools of the state, from 80 to 55 per cent, 296 seats were still vacant till Thursday. Incidentally, all vacant seats are in the boys’ category.

The state government has opened meritorious schools in several districts under the “Society for Promotion of Quality Education for Poor & Meritorious Student of Punjab”. The plan is meant for students from government schools who score more than 80 per cent marks in Class X.

In 2017, 954 seats were left vacant in nine meritorious schools, following which the minimum marks for registration were lowered from 80 per cent to 55 per cent for general category and 50 per cent for the quota category. In all, there were 4,600 seats in these schools with 2,875 seats reserved for girls. This year, out of the total 1,725 seats for boys, 296 seats remained unoccupied.

As per the Education Department, Amritsar has 29 vacant seats, Ferozepur 86, Gurdaspur 133, Jalandhar and Patiala four each, Sangrur 29 and SAS Nagar school 11. Of the total 296 vacant seats, 276 are of science stream. All seats in Bathinda and Ludhiana school have been filled.

Prashant Kumar Goyal, Director General, School Education (Punjab), said: “More than 200 seats are still vacant. We will devise a plan to fill these. There can be various factors. I think one of the possible factors can be that students avoid taking admissions away from their hometown.”