Students, teachers find Class 11 exams ‘very tough’

MADURAI

: Students and teachers have almost unanimously termed the Class XI state board examinations which got over on Friday as “very tough”. Apart from expecting a considerable decline in the number of centum scorers, several teachers and school administrations said the pass percentage could also be slightly lower. They said that the paper was even tougher than Class XII exams which got over a few days ago.


Experts cited the new syllabus introduced for Class XI to be a major reason for students finding the questions difficult. Some teachers said that the current syllabus pattern was almost on par with CBSE standards, if not higher. Madurai secretary of Tamil Nadu Post Graduate Teachers Association (TNPGTA) M Chandran claimed that since the current batch of Class XI students wasn’t tested as much till they were in Class X, they found it very hard to adapt to the new syllabus.

He added that the portions to cover in the new syllabus were considerably more compared to the old one. “Right from mathematics to commerce, economics and computer science, most of the papers were difficult. Students all of a sudden weren’t able to adapt to a tough syllabus,” he told TOI. The teachers said that as in Class XII exams, in Class XI too the number of “creative questions” and “questions from within the book” were far more than what was anticipated.

However, there was a flip side too. “The students might have struggled in Class XI, but the fact that they’ve written a tough examination means they could find Class XII exams to be comparatively easier because they’ve attended a similar question pattern already,” B Senthil Kumar,

Madurai district

president of Tamil Nadu High and Higher Secondary Schools

Computer Science Teachers Association

said. A Class XI student from a city-based corporation school said that he was worried about the results, especially the mathematics paper. A senior principal of a leading private school in the city told TOI that in her institution, there would be at least 20 centum scorers in Class XI usually, but this year, it could decrease significantly. “We’re just hoping that the passing percentage doesn’t get affected,” she added.