Kerala High Court Dismisses CBSE/ICSE Students' Pleas To Exclude Class XII Marks From Entrance Exams For Professional Courses In State

The Kerala High Court on Friday dismissed a batch of petitions filed by ICSE and CBSE students aggrieved by the scheme prepared for admission to professional courses, particularly engineering colleges in the State this academic year.

The petitioners had sought a directive to the State to provide admission to professional courses for the academic year 2021 in the State considering the marks secured by students in the entrance examination rather than including the scores obtained in their Class XII examinations.

Justice PB Suresh Kumar while dismissing the pleas, however, emphasized that the petitions praying for inclusion of the results of the improvement examinations were allowed. 

Two of the petitions had requested the Centre to stall the closing of the mark-uploading portal till the results of the improvement exams for Cass XII were published for CBSE as well as ICSE Boards. These petitions have therefore been allowed. 

During its elaborate hearings over the week, the Court had also expressed its sympathy with the plight of the ICSE students competing for limited seats at professional colleges based on their performance in Class XII.

In course of the proceedings, various aspects were discussed in detail, including the standardization procedure as well as the moderation policies adopted by the different boards. 

This comes after a bunch of ICSE and CBSE students approached the Court challenging the evaluation criteria for admission to engineering colleges in Kerala whereby the marks scored by students in class 12 board exams are given equal weight along with the entrance examination score.

It was the case of the petitioners that owing to the policy of "assessment standardization" or moderation policy adopted by CBSE and ICSE boards to calculate the class 12 examination scores, the petitioners are at a severe disadvantage while applying for engineering courses.

As per the notification issued by the Commissioner of Entrance Exams, for the preparation of the rank list, an equal weightage of 50: 50 will be given to the score obtained in the entrance examination and the marks obtained in the Grade XII after standardization.

This caused great concern to the students enrolled in CBSE and ICSE schools for the reason that even if standardization was done, it cannot give a satisfactory result. They alleged that the 50% of marks obtained in 12th was patently erroneous and does not serve the purpose for which the ratio is provided.

Owing to the pandemic, CBSE schools and ISCE schools in the State had not conducted final examinations for Grades X and XII.

As per the latest proposal by the Centre, the qualifying marks are to be calculated on the basis of the scores secured by each student during the previous three classes namely classes IX, X, and XI.

They contended that their results were therefore not evaluated based on their academic performance in Grade XII alone, while students enrolled in State schools had given final exams, the results of which will reflect their performance in this Grade alone.

As per the moderation policies announced by CBSE and ICSE, no student of any school will score more than what was the highest average marks obtained by ex-students in the past three and five years respectively. This had been approved by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Moreover, it was contended that the more lenient method of evaluation adopted by the SSLC board gave its students an unfair advantage in procuring seats in engineering colleges in the state.

Case Title: Salvia Hussain and Ors v. State of Kerala & Ors and connected matters.