Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram   

Plus Two admissions getting delayed

By J.Ajith Kumar

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 21. Even nearly two months after the results of the SSLC examinations held in April 2002, were announced, the admissions to the next higher level, the `Plus Two' course, are being held up indefinitely.

It is understood that the delay has been caused by the indecisiveness of the State Government over the sanctioning of the plus-two courses in the unaided schools.

Even though the Government had already agreed in principle to sanction Plus-two courses in unaided management schools positively this year itself, it was apparently dragging its feet and a final decision was still not forthcoming.

More than 400 unaided schools were anticipating the sanctioning of the plus-two courses and among them were some of the leading private schools in Thiruvananthapuram district as well. Most of these schools enjoyed the reputation of having produced excellent results in the SSLC examination year after year.

This year, despite the fact that the SSLC examinations were delayed on account of the 32-day-long State-wide strike by Government employees and teachers, the results were published well on time as in the previous years, thanks to the extra effort put in by the `Pareeksha Bhavan' under the Commissionerate of Government Examinations. And small wonder, the Government grabbed the credit for the entire exercise.

However, the toil of thousands of teachers and other non- teaching staff concerned with the conduct of the SSLC examinations has now turned out to be futile, with their efforts not benefiting the students.

The schedule of admission to the higher secondary course, drawn up well in advance, to facilitate the smooth conduct of admission and the starting of the plus-two courses, has gone awry, mainly on account of the indifferent attitude of the Government.

The last date for submitting applications for admission to the plus-two course was postponed several times and as per the latest schedule, it was July 25. In any case, it was unlikely that the plus-two courses would start this year before the Onam holidays by which time the first quarter of the academic year would have been lost.

Parents as well as teachers of higher secondary schools have accused the Government of deliberately delaying the admission process in order to benefit the managements of unaided schools. If the sanctioning of the plus-two courses in such schools did not come through before the admissions were conducted to the existing higher secondary schools, the casualty would well be the unaided schools and the Government was well seized of the matter and hence the postponement of admissions, they feel.

Once the `cream' of the student community was admitted to the existing schools, either Government or aided private schools, the unaided ones would be left with only students with low marks or those who have just managed to scrape through.

Since the admission to the plus-two courses was based on the marks secured in the SSLC examination, there was every possibility that only those who could not make it to the existing schools on merit, would turn to the unaided schools, over which the students and parents thought, there still was an element of uncertainty.

It was exactly such a situation that the Government was eager to avoid through the postponement of admissions to the existing plus-two schools, a large section of parents seemed to believe. Despite this, the Government was dithering and a final decision on the sanctioning of the plus-two courses in unaided schools was yet to come, for reasons best known to the powers that be.

Since the results of the Save A Year (SAY) examinations were also out, the delay in the plus-two admissions could not be attributed to this, either.

It may be recalled that last year, the plus-two admissions were over by July 4. This year, classes for the Vocational Higher Secondary course have already commenced.

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