Odia, Telugu medium students shine in exams

English-medium students may have outperformed their counterparts in Gujarati medium as far as Class 10 board results are concerned, but in percentage terms, it is those from Odia and Telugu medium who have had the most stellar performance.

The pass percentage for Odia medium students in Class 10 was a whopping 97.06 per cent while that of Telugu medium students was 88.64 per cent, both higher than the pass percentage of English Medium students (88.11 per cent).

It should, however, be noted that the number of students who appeared for Class 10 in Odia medium was a miniscule 136. Of these, 132 of them cleared their exams. As for Telugu medium students 39 of the 44 students who appeared managed to clear their exams.

The other mediums like Tamil (75 per cent), Urdu (72.39 per cent), Marathi (74.46 per cent) Hindi (72.66 per cent) and even Sindhi (66.67 per cent) had a better performance than Gujarati medium (64.58 per cent).

Sukhdev Patel, who has closely studied the education sector in Gujarat said that percentage of students who cleared the exams should not alone be a criteria.

"Odia and Tamil students may have performed better but their numbers are way too low than Gujarati medium students. So the benefit is obvious. When you have less number of students a teacher is more likely to concentrate on the students and the quality is better," said Patel.

He however said another more important reason is the dedication of teachers in these schools. "Most of the regional language secondary schools are often run by private trusts. They are people who are passionate about their language. The children who come to these school are also poor. But the sheer dedication of the school and the teachers towards their language often gets reflected in the success of their students," said Patel.

He said as far as Gujarati medium's poor performance is concerned there is a need to analyse the results from both the urban and rural perspective. "Also we need to know how have private and government schools performed. Overall the reason is that many schools in Gujarat still lack teachers. Even when they have teachers the quality of teaching is not upto the mark," said Patel.

He said children who opt for Gujarati medium private schools are often poor and hence can't pay high fee. "This means the school also pays its teachers less and this also affects teaching quality," said Patel.