TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
Patna: Following strict measures against cheating, more than 50 percent of the students appearing in the class 10 exams conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board failed with the pass percentage only 44.66, and only 10.86% student passed with first division. While this aspect of the news has been widely covered and state toppers ‘discredited’ on national media, an NGO has shown that this is by no means, the only face of education in Bihar.
For the 294 studetnts of Bihar and Jharkhand based Rahbar Coaching Centre, the fact that they were able to give these exams was no mean achievement in itself, given their economic conditions. For 118 of these students, this was a day to cheer as they cleared the exams with first division.
“The overall pass percentage stood at 86%. While 40.1 % students got first division, 40.5 % got second division and 5 .4%, i.e. 16 students achieved third division,” said Enam Khan, coordinator of Rahbar Coaching Centre, Patna & Jharkhand Chapter.
An initiative of Bihar Anjuman, a non-government organization, Rahbar Coaching Centres (RCCs) run in 16 districts of Bihar and Jharkhand. This is a unique scheme to bring socially backward and downtrodden students on par with others through intensive teaching plan and consistent orientation programmes and currently has 1100 number of students enrolled at the centre. “All the students are very poor and come from different government schools. The object of the Anjuman is to convert non-meritorious poor students to meritorious students,” Enam said.
He added that students who studied in the RCCs for less than 9 months during the current year could not perform well, and form a major chunk of the 14% of the students who failed to clear the exams this year. The students who have consistently been with the RCCs from 8th grade (in centres which started more than 2 years ago) have done excellently well, thus making a case for “catching them young”.
Two important features of RCCs, which separate them from other money-making centres is that students here are admitted not on merit but on a first-come-first-served-basis; and caters only to those enrolled in government schools. “Enrolment in govt. schools is a surety of their economic backwardness. Considering that teaching hardly takes place in these schools, and almost 95% muslims (below poverty line) having these as the only option for schooling of their children, at the time of admission into RCCs (Grade 8), they are academically very weak with little incentive for continuing their education. If these students hadn’t been here, they would have been likely to drop-out,” Enam added.
No admission tests are conducted for admission into RCCs. Interview, if conducted, were meant to gauge the interest of students in continuing with their education.
The idea of the Centre is to turn potential drop-outs from the educational mainstream into potential talents of tomorrow. The next step, according to Enam, is to send them into diploma engineering courses, the shortest route to a respectable employment.