School's slip-up costs first-gen SC student two yrs of education

A shocking incident of negligence by the Tamil Nadu school education department has proved costly for a first-generation learner belonging to an SC community in Nilgiris.

- N DHAMOTHARAN @Coimbatore

Despite having failed in three subjects in the Class 10 board exams in 2022, the girl student was admitted to classes 11 and 12 and allowed to take both public exams, which she passed.

The discrepancy came to light only when the girl applied for college admission, invalidating two years of her high school education and forcing her to join an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) for a wireman course based on her Class 8 marks.

The girl had studied Class 10 at a government high school in Aravenu in Nilgiris district. In the public exams held in 2022, she failed in three subjects: mathematics, science and social science. However, in violation of norms, the headmistress of the government higher secondary school in Kotagiri admitted her for Class 11 in a vocational stream (Office Management and Secretaryship), even before she wrote the supplementary exams.

In the supplementary exams held in August 2022, the student passed in mathematics but failed again in the other two papers. Nonetheless, in March 2023, she sat for her Class 11 public exams and secured 310 out of 600 marks.

The next year, she took the Class 12 exams and passed with 306 out of 600 marks.