Scores Of Students End Their Lives After Examination Results Goof-Up

A wave of student suicides have been reported from the southern Indian state of Telangana after goof-ups in their examination results led many of them to be declared as failed in the tests.

The examinations were conducted by the Board of Intermediate Examination in February and March, and the results were announced on April 18. News reports say many students, who had a record of scoring good grades in the first year of the two-year course, were declared to have failed. The most famous instance reported was that of Gajja Navya, whose results showed she had scored only zero marks in the local language course and was declared to have failed in the examination. She had scored 98 percent in the same course in the first year of the program. A "re-verification" found that her actual score this year was 99 percent. Some students were marked absent despite having attended and written the exam.

Since the results were declared, more than a score students have taken their life, some by jumping in front of trains, jumping off buildings, or even immolating themselves.

The goof-up and the suicides caused widespread protests by students and their parents, forcing K. Chandrashekar Rao, the chief minister of the state, to make an emotional appeal for restraint and calm. Two more students reportedly took their lives after that appeal.

A second-year intermediate student, Maithili, who had dreams of pursing a career in medicine, ended her life in her house last week, Firstpost reported. Maithili was a bright student who had fared well in the first-year examination, but the results showed that she had failed zoology and physics, shattering her dreams.

A government-appointed enquiry committee has reportedly accepted errors in the evaluation process. The fiasco is being blamed on a software that is used to evaluate the answer sheets. Some 900,000 students took the examination this year, of which 300,000 were declared failed. This lowered the pass percentage this year by 2 percent compared to the previous year.

Students in India are under pressure to score high in their school and college examinations as well as entrance examinations to elite educational institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.

Reports of students taking their own lives after being unable to make it to make the cut in these examinations are uncommon. But those examinations and their evaluation are more rigorous, and goof-ups like in this case are rare.