The state secondary education board on Thursday announced that less than 7 lakh candidates will write Madhyamik this year.
Last year, more than 10 lakh candidates had written the test.
Madhyamik 2023 starts on February 24.
“This year 6,98,628 candidates will write the Class X board examinations. Last year, the figure stood at 10,98,775. A drop has been registered,” board president Ramanuj Ganguly said.
What led to the massive drop?
Ganguly said the current batch of students could not attend in-person classes when they were in Class IX because of pandemic-induced closure of the campuses.
“It could be that they did not have enough preparations because in-person classes could not be held. The lack of preparation might have dissuaded them from writing the exams, which will be held based on the entire syllabus,” Ganguly said.
Findings of several studies have shown that online classes can never be as effective as offline classes.
Last year, Madhyamik was held on a truncated syllabus because the examinees missed in-person classes for two years — from March 2020 (when the pandemic-induced shutdown started) till February 2022.
The state government allowed reopening of schools for in-person classes in February 2022 following a sharp fall in Covid cases.
The examinees of the current Madhyamik batch could only attend in-person classes after they were promoted to Class X last year.
Learning loss because of closure of schools is one of the biggest global threats to longterm recovery from Covid-19 and the economic cost will be severe if corrective action is not taken urgently, Nobel laureate Abhijeet Banerjee had said in February 2022.
The economist is co-chair of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, which was set up by the West Bengal government to recommend measures for the education sector in the post-pandemic world.
A board official attributed the sharp drop in the number of examinees to another factor — the age bar the school education department had implemented in 2017, when the candidates of the current batch were enrolled in Class VI.
“Because of the age bar, fewer candidates enrolled in Class VI in 2017. That partly explains the steep drop in the number of Madhyamik candidates this year compared with 2022,” he said.
27 parakeets rescued
A team of foresters rescued 27 parakeets in Siliguri on Thursday and arrested a person who was allegedly carrying the birds.
The team from the Dabgram forest range of the Baikunthapur forest division intercepted Gopal Kundu of Bhujiapani of Bagdogra.
Kundu, who had kept the birds in a bag, was apparently planning to sell them in a rural market.