Orissa has fallen so low that when the results of the Board of Secondary Education came out on 25th June, around 50 percent of students were found failed with answer-scripts of around 13 thousand students stashed behind the black curtain of corruption, consideration and incompetence.
The Board President Arun Samantray, an IAS officer, who is very much in news for nepotism in facilitating his son’s success in a certificate test, says sans qualms that the poor result is not due to defective management of examinations; but due to the confusion created by changes in syllabus like introduction of optional subjects and practical as well as due to lack of adequate teachers to deal with the specialized subjects introduced in the syllabus.
Even as this syndrome is not area specific, students of Saraswati Vidya Mandirs have excelled everywhere including bagging the top position. The saffronists in power in Orissa run this chain of schools. Students in these schools might have fetched spectacular results on merit, but the confusion created by change in syllabus has so rampantly affected the students that test debacle having demoralized majority of them, the achievers of this particular brand of schools run by politicians in power makes people look at their achievements askance. Many wonder, is there any secret shenanigan?
Such a bizarre situation in secondary education had never hit Orissa so severely so far.