100 high schools in Punjab flunk the test

Sanjeev Singh Bariana
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 12

Even as 11 government high schools whose students scored over 80 per cent marks in the first-ever grading by the Punjab Education Development Board are celebrating their success, it’s a wake-up call for at least 100 others that scored less than 33 per cent.

The 100-mark grading for schools had 50 marks for academic merit, 20 for infrastructure and 10 each for co-curricular activities, school management committees and attendance.

Deputy State Project Director for Grading Manoj Kumar Pushkarna said: “At least 100 schools have scored less than 33 per cent, so there is a need to think about their performance and ways to improve.”

The process to grade 1,740 schools, which began in June this year, has been completed. The first list naming the top schools was out in October.

Sixty-eight of the 1,740 high schools did not provide their result sheets. The performance of majority of schools that did not provide details of their results had been “very average”. Thirty-two others scored less than 20 per cent in academic performance. A large number of schools did not provide attendance details. Many schools that emerged successful in the overall merit list have performed “below average” in academics. On the attendance front, Government High School-Babri (Gurdaspur), GHS-Waziran (Hoshiarpur), GHS-Wan Tara Singh (Tarn Taran), GHS-Thetherke (Gurdaspur) and GHS-Saila Khurd (Hoshiarpur) got only two marks out of allotted 10, while GHS-Behak Bodla (Fazilka), GHS-Bhure Khurd (Ferozepur) and GHS-Saidpur (Amritsar) got four marks each.

Secretary (School Education) Krishan Kumar said, “The grading will be updated every year. We are making some amendments to make the exercise more participative. Except random sampling, we have largely relied on data provided by the schools.”

Headmaster of a high school in Hoshiarpur district said, “The exercise was completed rather hurriedly and many schools were not able to provide data.”

At least 14 per cent schools scored between 40 and 50 marks for academics, 54 per cent got above 30, 15 per cent above 25 and around 17 per cent schools scored less than 15 marks in the grading.