Odisha Schools Stare At Seat Crunch For HS Students

Bhubaneswar: Thanks to the alternate assessment method, a record number of 6,17,876 students have passed the Class X board exam in 2021. But this has created a problem for higher secondary (HS) schools in Odisha.

The state has a total of 6,03,113 seats in the HS level and hence less than the numbers required to accommodate all the successful Class X students. There could be a dearth of almost 30,000 seats in the HS level, according to an initial estimate.

As a result, 632 schools have sought permission to increase around 52,000 seats for Class XI.

This followed the Odisha government’s invitation to aided and private, self-financing HS schools to increase the number of seats for the 2021-22 academic session.

“The government will examine the applications from private and aided HS schools. The 51 state-run schools need not seek permission as they can increase up to 20% as per the demand for seats,” school and mass education minister Samir Ranjan Dash was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

According to sources, the government is set to start the admission process once the results of all national boards are announced.

The ICSE results are already out, but the CBSE will take some more time to declare the results as computation work still needs to be completed. Also, the offline exam of the Board of Secondary Education, Odisha, for Class X students is slated to take place on July 31.