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Key Highlights Punjab School Education Board doled out 27 grace marks to 1.12 lakh students who had failed in one or more subjects

This ensured that the pass percentage jumped from an embarrassing 39.5% to a respectable 72.25%

This ensured that the pass percentage jumped from an embarrassing 39.5% to a respectable 72.25% Even in 2015, pass percentage jumped from 48.22%, to 65.21% in similar way

Chandigarh: It seems that failure is not something the Punjab School Education Board takes well. When a huge number of students failed the 2016 Class X exam, the board doled out nothing less than 27 grace marks to a massive 1.12 lakh students, all of whom had failed in one or more subjects.

This ensured that the pass percentage jumped from an embarrassing 39.5% to a more than respectable 72.25%. According to the board’s academic regulations, not more than 1% grace marks can be given. All this was done on May 23, just six days before the intermediate examination scandal of propping up toppers rocked Bihar.

TOI has accessed the board’s confidential note titled ‘Comparative statement for moderation of result’, which instructed officials how to give grace marks. The note was approved by board chairperson Tejinder Kaur Dhaliwal, secretary Janak Raj Mehrok and vice-chairman Suresh Tandon on May 24. The results were announced a day later.

Barely 48 hours before results were announced, the board asked two Delhi-based software firms — Sai Data Soft Private Limited and DataSoft Pivate Limited — which were preparing the result, to submit four different formulas to award the grace marks. This despite the fact that were no errors or typos in the six question papers. There was just one small error in the mathematics paper. Once the final formula was applied, 2,45,509 students out of 3.4 lakh students cleared the class X exam. Only 1,34,471 students would have passed if the grace marks had not been given.

“We have followed the rule book and will make amendments if necessary,” said Mehrok. Despite numerous attempts, TOI failed to contact Punjab education minister Daljeet Singh Cheema and the board chairperson, Dhaliwal.

All students who were failing were first given 1% grace, which is equivalent to seven marks, and 10 marks in general. These 17 marks could be used in any or all of the six subjects — Science, English, Math, Social Science, Hindi and Punjabi. Besides, all students whether they were failing or not, were given four marks grace each in English and Social Science and two marks in Mathematics.

Records accessed by TOI reveal that even in 2015, the original pass percentage jumped from 48.22%, to 65.21% in similar way.

The moderation note justifies the grace marks saying, “The chairperson can moderate the results if the pass percentage has dropped significantly from the previous years”.

