The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), describes “Gross Enrolment Ratio” as the total enrolment within a country “in a specific level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population in the official age group corresponding to this level of education“.

The GER of Tamil Nadu is the highest at @ 48% (except for Sikkim & Chandigarh) of those who pass out from the Higher Secondary School.

Let us look at the number of students who pass out of the Higher Secondary School. As per the data for 2020, the total students who passed out is around 8,00,000. Therefore 3,84,000 students would be competing among themselves to get into Colleges in India, Abroad, and within the State of Tamil Nadu.

The next question to be considered is: How many college seats are available within Tamil Nadu to accommodate @ 3,50,000 students? (@24000 students may go abroad or to other colleges outside Tamil Nadu).

The first point to be considered is : What is the yardstick based on which the inter se precedence in admission to the colleges and courses are determined?

The norm was the examination conducted by the various school boards and their marks are normalised by a certain formula and admissions are granted.

Therefore, if common examinations are NOT conducted because of covid complications & anxieties, what would be the yardstick?

Would the yardstick be based on the eleventh standard marks, or internal marking based on online classes?

Such a determination would be prone to prejudice and not giving enough weightage to those students who are late bloomers.

Therefore, i believe we need to conduct 12 th standard examinations to get the latest assessment of the inter-se calibre of the competing students. Which would be accurate for contemporaneous reasons.

Now let us look into how many college seats are available within Tamil Nadu?

Do we have 3,50,000 seats?

I guess not.

In view of the above, in all fairness, 12th standard examinations ought to be conducted by the Tamil Nadu government as TN is a state where the GER is very high and we need to provide seats for all those eligible students based on a contemporaneous assessment.

Comparison between Tamil Nadu and the other states is a joke, as the next state which approximates to TN in terms of the GER is less by 10%!

Foremost is the fact that School Education doesn’t find a separate entry in the Constitution of India. Education is entry number 25 of List 3 of Schedule VII, subject to the Higher Education and technical education entries at 63,64,65 and 66 of List 1 of Schedule VII!

Therefore the Secondary Education in reality has to be handled by the State government concerned. Leaving that to the states is very important as there is no parity among states if we take GER as the yardstick.

Hope the TN government would conduct the twelfth examination.