Lockdown impact: Pass percentage of JAC Inter Science plummets by 11

RANCHI: The aggregate pass rate for the Jharkhand Academic Council’s (JAC’s) Intermediate Science examination, the result of which was declared on Tuesday, has decreased by 11%.
The pass rate in 2022 was 92.19 per cent, while the same in 2023 is 81.85 per cent.
Schools were closed for a prolonged period during the pandemic, disrupting the academic schedule.Additionally, the students had to take written examinations for the first time after five years, instead of the previous practice of giving practical exams, which may have contributed to their lower performances, educationists said.
The principal of Marwari + 2 High School, Ashish Kumar, said, “The severe crunch of science-specific teachers might have contributed to this year’s decline in student enrollment. Another possible reason could be that they developed a habit of writing exams on an OMR sheet, and took subjective exams after five years.”
The candidates who appeared in the Class XII exams this year took the last written examinations in 2018. The examinations for classes VIII in 2019 and IX in 2020 were held using OMR sheets. Due to the pandemic, matriculation (including inter) examinations could not be conducted in 2021, and students were passed based on their Class IX results. In 2022, the same students took the Class XI examination on the OMR sheet. In 2023, when intermediate exams began, the students took both OMR sheet and written exams.
Changes to the examination structure are also cited as a contributing factor to the low pass rate. The principal of Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav College, J P Singh, said, “The students perused the entire syllabus for the 2023 exam pattern, but since the academic year began in July and the exams were administered in March, the students were not fully prepared. Half of the questions were objective and the other half were subjective. The curriculum was reduced by 40 per cent in 2021, and by 25 per cent in 2022, when these candidates took their Class XI exams. But this time, the weightage was increased on subjective questions.”
“The students should be counselled before they choose their stream. Most of them opt for science if they score well in Class X, but the curriculum of Class XII is so extensive that they are unable to perform well thereafter. After five years, Inter science students may have taken the written examination, which is a significant factor in the decline in performance. The students who sat for the Intermediate Science examination in 2023 had last taken the Class VII written examination in 2018.”