CBSE fails trust test, Bengaluru students rush to join pre-university colleges

Bengaluru: With Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) engulfed by evaluation errors in the on-screen marking (OSM) system, class 11 students in Bengaluru are shifting from CBSE schools to PU colleges. Some students are not even waiting for a fee refund while changing boards.With trust deficit deepening, students fear they might not get good scores in core subjects such as physics, chemistry, and maths during CBSE evaluation. When it comes to professional courses, authorities take an equal average of CET and II PU or CBSE scores.Anecdotally, the number of students switching boards after the start of the academic year is visibly increasing. A teacher in charge of the senior secondary segment at a CBSE school in Bengaluru said five students decided to withdraw their admissions into class 11 because of the recent CBSE controversies.“Parents and students are worried. Admissions for our class 11 started in Nov and lasted till March. Students were asked to pay a deposit of Rs 30,000. These five students have opted out in spite of not getting a refund,” she said.Sandeep Pai S, chairman, Bangalore Sahodaya Schools, an association of Bengaluru schools offering CBSE as the teaching curriculum, confirmed the trend. “A parent cited the CBSE controversy as the reason for pulling out her child. This is true of several schools. We’ve seen cases where students have pulled out after the confusion began,” he said.Earlier, TOI had reported an increasing trend of more and more CBSE and ICSE students shifting to the state’s pre-university board after class 10. They now account for 12% of the total PU population in Karnataka. The latest CBSE row is an unlikely reason to boost this shift.“Some CBSE schools run PU colleges too on their campus. For students on such campuses, change is easier, as the management permits a shift. Some schools have kept the fees the same for both PU and CBSE sections, but still people prefer to take up PU. In Karnataka, parents want marks,” he added.“We had seven students with good class 10 results dropping out. We tried to convince them, but they went ahead to PU colleges,” said J Bhuvaneswari, principal, Presidency School (South).“Admissions have dropped in classes 11 and 12. We had 117 students in class 10. Only 10% came to CBSE. We could get 25 in that, of which three went to PU. The CBSE controversy is having a negative impact,” said a principal, who did not want to be identified.Another principal said the CBSE controversy, which broke out a few weeks ago, might impact next year’s admissions more.