Students using rural schools to pass SSC exam

The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education is upping the ante against students who use unfair means to clear the SSC exams. One of methods being targeted is students taking admission in schools in Bhandara, Gadchiroli and Gondia. Schools in the rural parts of these districts apparently allow students to copy and clear the board exams.


A highly placed official at the Nagpur division board office said, "The copying in these schools is possible due to the involvement of school management. In return for monetary benefits, the management helps students to copy on a mass scale. Sometimes, due to shortage of manpower, we are also not able to monitor each and every classroom in the rural areas."


The board now intends to identify schools which see an increase in admissions in Std X, sometimes even midsession. "Why would a student from Nagpur want to go to a rural school in Gondia? I can understand if his father has been transferred or the entire family has moved there, to be closer to their village. But apart from this, there is no logical reason for a shift. We will be observing dozens of suspect schools and keeping tabs on admissions. This will help us implement the anti-copying programme for the 2012 board exam," the official said.


The board also admits that there is nothing in the rule book that can stop a student from shifting to a school of his or her choice. "It is true that the student can give any reason for the change. And legally, there is nothing we can use to stop the school from admitting a student, or stop the student from going there. But we are hoping for two things to happen. First, with the board officially looking into the matter, the school itself may try to avoid giving admissions. Second, even if we can't stop the admissions, we will at least have the knowledge where copying is more likely to happen and deploy manpower accordingly," said the official.


Another reason for this unfair practice taking place in these districts is the large number of centres but sparse student population. The anti-copying flying squads find it difficult to keep tabs on all centres, and many of the rogue school students manage to get through. Keeping this in mind, already 32 centres have been shut down in Nagpur division by the board since last year citing redundancy, and more could face the axe before the 2012 board exam.