Maharashtra: New reservation card

Parents of students, if not students themselves, enroled in Maharashtras 192 upscale schools affiliated with the Delhi-based CISCE (Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations) and CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Educa-tion), are reeling with shock following a June 8 announcement made by Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, the states education minister. Patil announced that the government will reserve 90 percent of capacity in the states 630 junior (Plus Two) colleges for students completing their class X school-leaving exams from schools affiliated with the SSC (Secondary School Certificate) examination board of the state government.In effect, this means that of the total number of 157,500 seats on offer in state government aided junior colleges at the start of every academic year, only 15,750 seats will be available to top-graded CISCE and CBSE students. Against this, an estimated 30,720 students in Maharashtra write the CBSE and CISCE boards class X exams every year. The only saving grace of this shock announcement is that the government intends to seek legal clearance of this proposal prior to translating it into law. Parent communities in Indias most industrial state (pop. 98 million), which has witnessed a rash of new schools affiliated with the Delhi-based exam boards (widely perceived to offer high- quality, globally benchmarked curric-ulums), are outraged by what they perceive to be an attempt by the state government to give students from state board-affiliated schools an unfair advantage over students from more upscale (and expensive) schools affiliated with the pan-India boards. With parents of CBSE and CISCE-affiliated schools openly vowing to challenge the June 8 ministerial pronouncement in court, Vikhe-Patil was forced to issue a supplementary statement saying that the government will solicit legal opinion prior to enforcing the 90:10 admissions proposal. The prime cause of the latest school education row, which has provoked a flood of letters to the editors of Mumbais top five English language dailies and jammed the telephone lines of top legal firms, is the multiplicity of examination boards in the country. School managements have the option of affiliating their institutions with CISCE and CBSE — which demand superior infrastructure and higher investment in applicant schools — or with state examination boards, which are less demanding. Nevertheless for reasons of political correctness, averages obtained in the class X exam of state board-affiliated schools are given equal weightage with marks and grades obtained in the class X exams of CISCE and CBSE schools. But of late, with a growing number of school managements preferring to affiliate with the two pan-India boards, in typical Indian style the state government has resorted to reservations, instead of raising teaching-learning standards in SSC schools to make the latter more attractive to students. The consensus of informed opinion within the academic community is that there is already an inherent bias in favour of SSC students applying to junior colleges in all states including Maharashtra, inasmuch as notwith-standing their less rigorous syllabus, curriculum and examinations, their marksheets are given equal status with those of class X school leavers from CBSE and…