Chennai, March 24 (PTI) The shocking absence of about 50,000 students in the Plus Two language exam echoed in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Friday, prompting School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi to assure the House that steps would be taken to identify the potential dropouts and encourage them to write the supplementary exam.

Sufficient awareness will be created among the students and parents on the importance of appearing for the board examination to complete school education, the Minister said.

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Responding to a special Calling Attention Motion raised by the principal opposition AIADMK and other parties in the Assembly, Poyyamozhi said, "Chief Minister M K Stalin was the first to raise the issue on why so many students failed to appear for the language paper on the first day."

The State government has provided Rs 40,299 crore to the school education department and extended numerous benefits including providing free uniforms and notebooks to government school students. "Inspite of this, the question 'where did these students go' is uppermost in the minds of the people," he said.

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The present batch of Class 12 students had been declared "all pass" when they were in class 10 due to the COVID-imposed lockdown.

"As it had impacted other sectors, the pandemic adversely affected students too. Post-COVID, the government is reaching out to students to make sure that the school education system becomes vibrant," he said.

During 2021-22, about 8.85 lakh students registered for the Plus One exam. Of them, 41,366 abstained from writing the exam while 83,811 failed. About 7.59 lakh students passed. A total of 1.25 lakh students, which included the absentees in Plus One and those who had failed, were included in the Plus Two board exam in 2022-23.

Of the 1.25 lakh, nearly 75,000 were made to write the exam. "Had they not been encouraged to write the exam, they would have gone out of the education system," Poyyamozhi claimed.

He said that a total of 49,000 students had absented themselves from the exam in 2019, a year before the COVID-19 outbreak. "So, the biggest challenge now is to make them return to schools," the Minister said.

Of the 8.36 lakh students registered for Plus Two board exam including the 1.25 lakh who either absented or failed in Plus One, 47,943 did not appear on March 13.

Assuring that action would be taken to make the students write the supplementary examination in July, he said 75 percent attendance will be made mandatory for the students from the coming academic year. Those who continue to absent themselves will be considered as potential dropouts and will be tracked and encouraged to attend special coaching classes in their schools.

To address the apprehensions of students and their parents, the toll-free number 14417 has been set up, the Minister said, adding that the government would consider providing socio-economic benefits to the potential dropouts and their parents, in an effort to make the students return to school.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)