Andhra, Telangana spar over school exam results
Andhra Pradesh took its rivalry with Telangana to another level with the state education minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao taunting the latter over the performance of its students in the secondary school certificate examinations.
Andhra Pradesh took its rivalry with Telangana to another level with the state education minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao taunting the latter over the performance of its students in the secondary school certificate examinations.
Since the bifurcation last June, the two states have been fighting over a host of issues and extended that enmity to the education sector by going in for separate exams this summer.
Telangana released its Class 10 results on Sunday recording a pass percentage of 77.56% while Andhra announced its results on Wednesday with a whopping 91.42% students clearing it.
Though Telangana saw a drop of about 8% this year owing to its new evaluation system and tougher questions in some subjects, performance of Seemandhra districts has been better than that of the Telangana districts even before the split.
But Rao stirred a controversy by pointing to the wide gap in the students' performance in the two states this year.
"We scored a record pass percentage of 91.42% while in Telangana it is 77.56%. In AP, 34.5% schools achieved a 100% pass and in Telangana, 13.5% schools could achieve that feat," said the minister.
"Comparisons are drawn between the two states over many aspects, so, let us also compare ourselves here as well," said Rao while releasing the results in Vizag.
However, Rao's Telangana counterpart Kadiyam Srihari did not take the comparison charitably.
"When the two states conducted exams separately with different question papers and evaluation processes, where is the question of comparison? As education minister, Rao should have had that minimum knowledge," Srihari told HT.
"Andhra might give it importance, but we do not think passing an exam is the sole criteria to evaluate a student's ability," said Srihari, who is also the deputy CM
The two states are at present also sparring over the admissions to the National Institute of Technology located at Warangal in Telangana.
Telangana is refusing to share the local state quota of 370 seats in the premier engineering college with Andhra Pradesh.
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