Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Class XI admissions: students in a quandary

Meera Srinivasan

Schools facing pressure to take back their old students

CHENNAI: Two weeks into the new academic year, Class XI students of various city schools are in a fix.

In the wake of a recent Madras High Court order, several school managements are facing the pressure to take back their old students, who completed Class X with them. They were either denied admission by the school or they opted out on their own.

In an order passed earlier this month, the Madras High Court stated there shall be no test, cut-off marks or “re-admission” system for Class X students, seeking admission to Class XI in the same school.

Following the order, several parents have rallied back to the old schools of their wards, pressurising the managements to take them back.

For school managements, the problem has cropped at a time when teachers and students were warming up to the new academic year. “All our seats for Class XI had been filled up. We just settled down and this happens,” a principal of a leading school said. “There are not enough seats. We just don’t know how justified it would be to send out a student who has just been admitted.”

Correspondent and Principal of Santhome Higher Secondary School J. Jesuraj said the number of seats in Class XI was much less than the number of students who passed Class X. “This is the case in most schools. In our school, we usually considered academic performance and conduct. Students who excelled in sports and other extra-curricular activities were also automatically admitted.”

Admitting the 400-odd Class X pass outs would translate to additional classrooms and recruitment of more teachers, which the school can not afford immediately.

Schools are therefore are resorting to various strategies to handle pressure. One of the prominent city schools has even got indemnity letters from parents stating they were opting for another school (State board school run by same management) out of choice and not out of compulsion, it is learnt.

In this case, parents refrained from putting pressure on the school management, fearing their wards’ admissions into the State Board school, too, may be cancelled.

However, advocate D. Nagasaila felt parents had an important role to play in ensuring effective implementation of the order. “They have to ascertain their rights,” he said.

Vidya Mandir (Mylapore) Parent-Teacher Association’s secretary Subhashini Parthasarathy said the school management admitted their Class X students into Class XI after the PTA urged them to do so this January.

Ms. Parthasarathy is also a member of the Concerned Citizens’ Committee, which, in an attempt to find a solution for other school students, took the matter to Court earlier this year.

With the State Government doing away with the Common Entrance Test (CET) this year, a large chunk of CBSE students are expected to have moved into schools following the State Board syllabus, considered to be easier than the CBSE syllabus.

Some State Board school managements are neither able to send back students nor accommodate a few more of their old students.

“Children are going through trauma,” Ms. Nagasaila added.

The Madras High Court directed the CBSE to ensure that all affiliated schools in the State complied with the directions issued on April 27, when the Court ruled that issuing transfer certificates to Class X students within the same school and readmitting them to Class XI was against the rules.

Earlier this month, the High Court said the order was applicable to schools following the State Board, Matriculation and Anglo-Indian streams as well.

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