SHILLONG: The Executive Chairman of Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBoSE), Pravin Bakshi hoped that adoption of new course of NCERT textbooks would help students in preparing for various competitive examinations.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, he said, “We hope that students who have passed class XII with the new course of NCERT textbooks, will do well for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) etc.”
He added MBoSE had taken the issue of textbooks for the science stream and commerce stream so that there was no shortage of textbooks.
“We are trying our best to make sure NCERT textbooks’ availability and so all steps are being taken and notification is out about the syllabus and the subjects,” he said.
As with regards to adoption of syllabus, the steps also are being taken and the Board has communicated with CBSE in this regard.
“It is a very visionary step taken by the government and we in MBoSE are going all along with it,” he said.
“As per the notification it is the CBSE syllabus with NCERT textbooks so we hope that with this session, there will be new textbooks,” the official said.
Bakshi said, “For the 2018-19 session of the class XII, they will finish up with the old course. This is the first year that we will start with the new course, the CBSE syllabus with NCERT textbooks for the syllabus of 2018-19 batch for class XI.”
Speaking about the pass percentage which fluctuates from year to year, he said pass percentage trends differed from district to district and did not depend only on the performance of the students.
Expressing gladness that the result could be declared in time, he said, “In East Khasi Hills students have done well but results in some other districts may not be very good such as in some of the districts of Garo Hills.”
“We have seen not many students from Garo Hills making it to the toppers’ list. We hope that next year more efforts will be made for the Science and Commerce streams in Garo Hills,” Bakshi assured.
According to him, the variation in pass percentage may be due to the difference in the way questions are being set.
Meanwhile, Principal of St. Anthony’s Higher Secondary School, Rev.Fr. Surgit Tigga SDB welcomed the change of syllabus from MBoSE to that of CBSE which, he said, would improve the prospects of students.
“They (MBoSE) have taken the decision of adopting the CBSE syllabus that is better structured and I am quite sure it will help the students not to only have good knowledge or understanding of the subject matter but at the same time to prepare themselves to appear in different competitive exams,” he told reporters after meeting the toppers.