The Federation of Private Schools Management has appealed to the government to restore the pass marks in second language Telugu in the SSC public examination to 20 per cent. The government had recently enhanced the second language pass percentage from 20 to 35, putting linguistic minority students in Telangana to hardship.
Federation president Fazlur Rahman Khurram said there were 14 per cent Muslim minority students and 3 per cent linguistic minority students in Telangana who were poor in Telugu writing skills. Reducing the pass marks to 20 per cent would be of great help, he said in a statement. The proposed formative assessment weightage of seven out of 20 may be reduced to five, and for summative assessment, the weightage should be cut down to 15 out of 80.
Mr. Khurram urged the government not to consider the second language marks for awarding GPA, merit scholarships/awards for admission to professional colleges. He further asked the Telugu Academy to rewrite the second language Telugu curriculum, books, evaluation system to improve the reading, writing and understanding skills of Telugu. It should also consider developing a bilingual (Telugu/Urdu) and trilingual (Telugu/Urdu/English) approach.
