Plea against proposed Class 11 public exam reaches Madras HC

A Madurai resident today moved the Madras High Court challenging the Tamil Nadu government's decision to hold "public examination" at class XI level too akin to the CBSE-held class X & XII-level board examinations.
A Madurai bench of the high court posted the matter for detailed hearing on July 19 after a brief hearing on the issue.
Petitioner K K Ramesh submitted to the bench of justices S S Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan that the government's move to bring class XI students under the ambit of public exams, would put an additional burden on the pupils who work hard to score high marks in class 10 and, then again, in class 12.

The students as well as the parents would be put to hardship for three years successively from class ten onwards and experience sleepless nights and frustration, he said while pleading with the court to quash the government order.
To this, the government counsel submitted that under the present system of examination, the students end up focusing only on Plus Two syllabus (Class XII) in order to secure engineering and medical seats in reputed institutes, ignoring the Plus One (Class XI) syllabus.
By not paying attention to the Plus One syllabus, they feel the burden after getting admitted into engineering colleges like Anna University, he said.

He argued that an experts committee set up to analyse the performance of the students during the first year of engineering courses also came to gthe same findings.
Accordingly, the government has decided to hold "public examination" at Class XI level.
The Tamil Nadu government had in May this year issued orders for conducting public examination for students of class XI, and proposed to revise school education syllabus "on par with CBSE standards" in the coming years.