The dismal Class X results of the Madhya Pradesh Education Board announced recently expose the tall claims of Chief Minister Digvijay Singh on the education front. The pass percentage dropped to an unprecedented 23.9 per cent, or less than one in four students.While one reason is the long-overdue rationalisation of the grace mark system by the board, the primary cause is the continuing neglect of the high school system in the Digvijay years. However, typically, the Opposition BJP has failed to highlight this, blaming the results instead on the power crisis.According to B.K. Saha, Chairman of the MP State Education Board: ‘‘I can say the level of examination is on par with similar examinations elsewhere in the country. We have also not received any complaints that the paper in any subject was excessively difficult. However, we found that the system of gracemarks was completely out of tune with what is prevalent elsewhere and we have brought this back.’’This year, the Board cut grace marks from 20, with a maximum of 14 in any one subject, to 5 which is the practice in the CBSE Board. This has seen the number of those passing with a third division plunging from 53,701 to 13,349. Even as the number of candidates has increased, the number of those passing with a first or second division shows no comparable plunge.Results in government schools have dropped from 34.22 per cent to 19.21 per cent, or less than 1 in 5, while private school results have gone down from 45.8 per cent to 34.9 per cent indicating that the cut in grace marks does not explain the entire picture in case of government schools. However, the focus on grace marks is long overdue as results in the past few years has been atrocious anyway. In 1999, the overall pass percentage was 38.98 per cent, in 2000 it was 43.17 per cent, in 2001 it was 45.90 per cent and in 2002 it was 38.06 per cent.
