Education recession: 57% flunk PU exam

BANGALORE: The wake-up couldn���t have been more rude. Only 43.34% students have cleared the II PU exam held in April. That���s a failure of nearly 57% and should give authorities a lot to worry about.

Sadly, this has been the trend in recent years. It���s only in 2005 and 2006 that the results crossed 50%. In 2008, the results dipped by 9%. This year, the increase is rather negligible ��� 2.03%. Of the 4.26 lakh freshers who took the exam, just 2.17 lakh cleared it, a mere 50.88%.

Bangalore boy Harsha N Bhushan of Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College has topped the Science stream by scoring 98.17%. The Arts topper Shruthi S K from Davanagere has scored 94%. The Commerce topper is from Udupi district, Swathi S with a stunning 98.5%.

Urban students fared better than their rural counterparts . While Bangalore South recorded 62.01% to be at fourth position, North recorded 61.53%. Students in Rural performed badly at 47.04%. While 56.11% girls (freshers) cleared the exam, only 45.57% boys passed.

Not a single student passed in 74 colleges. Surprisingly , the numbers are more in private unaided colleges.
���We are not happy with the pass percentage. However, even if it is 2% there has been some progress compared to last year���s results��� ��� is all PU commissioner S G Hegde said.

Educationists said there is more than one reason for the poor pass percentage, the primary one being ensuring quality control. Since the nofail policy is in place in primary schools to ensure that children do not drop out of school due to bad performance , at the higher level, there ought to be stringent evaluation methods.