Fall in education standards alarming: Kerala HC

KOCHI: The High Court on Tuesday observed that the standard of education in the state has deteriorated drastically and held that the authorities as well as the court that could have arrested the down-slide had not done anything to maintain the standards.The advent of self-financing colleges which have sprouted in the state like mushrooms has led to this situation, the court observed while considering a batch of petitions seeking expeditious revaluation of answer papers of university examinations.“Perhaps, the courts, may also be responsible, to some extent, in not taking appropriate action to arrest the slide, when it got the opportunity,” Justice S Siri Jagan said in his order. “Our education system has started dumping sub-standard specimens on the unsuspecting public. It has come to a stage wherein before going to to a doctor or a dentist, we should first ascertain as to from which college he has obtained the degree,” he said.“It is alarming to note that in matrimonial columns, prospective brides and bridegrooms qualify their degrees with the epithet ‘in merit seat’. The court hopes that wisdom will dawn at least now,” it said.The students often lose a precious year of their life because of the delay in revaluation of papers, which is because of the lethargy on the part of the officers of the universities. However, the universities submitted that the number of applications for revaluation had increased tremendously and the government had not sanctioned adequate number of staff proportionate to the increase in work.The universities further submitted that there was a lack of sufficient number of teachers willing to undertake valuation work and there was no adequate financial resources. The court held that the situation was of their own making as they had the power to insist on the teachers to undertake examination works as part of their teaching job.The court also issued eight directions for speeding up the evaluation process. It said that the universities should reduce the time limit for submitting applications for revaluation to 15 days of publication of results of the examination.