Mumbai: Despite Maharashtra’s dwindling registrations for the SSC board 2022-23, the number of students enrolling from Mumbai has not seen a sharp change with some schools even reporting a surplus of students.
A total of 3.54 lakh students are to appear from the Mumbai division, which includes Mumbai City, Thane, Palghar, and Raigad. At 1.16 lakh, the highest number of students hailed from Thane while the lowest came from South Mumbai at 30,850.
Certain schools that are hosting exams within the city have reported an increased influx of students than the previous years. “Our school will be going online for classes 1-9 till the boards come to an end. We have seen a rise in students assigned to us and we need to accommodate all of them.
Even after this the board for asking us to take in 50 more children but we just couldn’t. In the end, we must all accommodate these changes to make board exams a success,” said Poonam Arora, Principal of Bombay Cambridge International School in Andheri.
The same dilemma was faced by another convent school in Bandra, where the school of 18 classrooms was asked to accommodate 400 students. The auditorium was turned into a classroom as well to arrange for all students.
“Our students come from humble homes and might not be able to get gadgets for an online school. So we have them come in from 07:30 am to 09:30 am, clean the entire school after they leave, and then prepare for SSC exams with our limited staff members.
There are many large schools around us that have been assigned very few students. Today we hosted very few students for the Urdu language paper, a large crowd is expected tomorrow,” said the Principal of the Bandra School.
Half Days for Class 1 to 9
To ensure that those appearing for exams are not distracted, lectures are held only during those hours when board examinations are not being conducted. In the space-crunched city of Mumbai, only those with large campuses are able to smoothly manage both.
“We have seen a rise of almost 5% in the number of students assigned to our school. Fortunately, we have enough classes to accommodate these students but many schools in the same predicament have had to go online to conduct lectures for classes 1 to 9,” said a Principal of a Deputy SSC exam centre in suburban Mumbai.
To many it seems that the Maharashtra State Board has thrown in the towel after assigning the schools to the students, providing no assistance to the institutions in need. “After years of having only 700-750 students, the board has suddenly sent 1000 SSC and 533 HSC students our way,” said Sudhir Ghagas, Principal of Padmashri Annasaheb Jadhav School in Bhiwandi.
With the timetables of the two exams colliding, the principal had to rent 20 rooms from the neighbouring BNN College to accommodate all students. “The board has asked us to solve all logistical problems at our own level. We have resorted to calling classes 1 to 4 and classes 5 to 9 on alternate days,” he added.
Board defends student allotment
While some speculate that this increase is intended to compensate for the closure of vernacular schools during the pandemic, board members state that the number of students assigned to each centre is valid and proportional to their admissions.
“It is possible that these schools have upped their intake in the past few years. We match the intake of schools to the number of pupils we assign them,” said Anuradha Oak, Secretary of the Maharashtra State Board.
Beginning with the First Language Paper, Maharashtra Board’s Class 10 SSC exams commenced on Thursday, March 2. The exams are being conducted for three hours and ten minutes in two shifts- 11 AM to 2:10 PM and 3 PM to 6:10 PM. Students have been instructed to reach the assigned centre 30 minutes before the exam time along with their admit cards.
