Ssc board students to get up to 25 marks extra for proficiency in drawing classical and folk arts

SSC Board Students to Get up to 25 Marks Extra for Proficiency in Drawing, Classical and Folk Arts

CBSE and ICSE Board Students are unhappy with the SSC Board’s decision to award extra marks to students proficient in arts.

By 11th Jan, 2017 | 12:38 pm

The Maharashtra State Board has decided to award a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 marks extra in Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams to students proficient in drawing, classical and folk arts.

SSC Board students already get additional marks for playing sports, which pushes their scores to 100% in some cases. With the scheme extended even to Intermediate drawing students, ICSE and CBSE Board candidates think that it will substantially increase the number of students getting additional marks in SSC Boards.

ICSE board too has skill-based subjects, known as group-3 subjects, such as cookery, technical drawing, home science, physical education, performing arts, among others. However, the Maharashtra government rules prohibit group-3 subjects to be counted as part of their ‘best-of-five’ score, which is a setback for the non-state board students during admissions.

A CBSE student from Mumbai said, “Best-of-five score is considered when applying for admissions to first-year junior college, so this means that only SSC students will dominate the sought-after colleges from now on”.

The CBSE has made Board Exams compulsory from the academic year 2017-2018. This calls for tougher times for CBSE students too. The HRD Ministry has already proposed for sports to become a compulsory subject in schools. The decision to award extra marks to students proficient in arts only reiterates HRD Minister Prakash Jawdekar’s pledge to offer students quality and a holistic education not confined to a single set of disciplines.