The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 1/Calcutta Matriculation
Calcutta Matriculation
The Catholic Herald of India has the following:
Thirteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-five candidates out of 18,958 passed the Calcutta Matriculation, a percentage of 74.2. 8,155 students passed in the first division, 5,090 in the second and 730 in the third. The high percentage is reported to be due to the grant of 10 grace marks in English.
The Educational Review of Madras, which, before the demise of Sir Asutosh Mukherjee used occasionally to wax indignant at our criticism of the Calcutta University and its chief, made some comments on last year’s results of the Calcutta Matriculation Examination which apply with greater force to this year’s result. They are therefore quoted below.
At the recent Matriculation Examination of the Calcutta University, there were 18,347 candidates out of whom there were the following passes:—
First division ... ... 7,978
Second division ... ... 5,023
Third division ... ... 1,145
It has been a loud complaint in recent years with regard to the University of Calcutta that the number of passes at the Matriculation Examination, has been so large as to lead to an appreciable deterioration in standards of collegiate education. It is all right to talk of giving a fair opportunity to everybody to take advantage of University education, but it is no use turning out herds of incompetent youths to sit in college classes, if they cannot benefit by the instruction imparted and they only serve the purpose of bringing down academic standards that instruction may reach even their understanding, and unripe experience. It is not however of this aspect that we wish to write on this occasion, and the percentage of passes is probably after all not so large as to alarm educationists, however extravagant they may seem to those brought up in the narrow academic stiffness of the University of Madras. We however wish to refer to the ridiculous state of affairs which is apparently responsible for producing more than six times the number of passes of the third division in the first division and nearly five times the number of passes of the third division in the second division. It is certainly a piece of human experience everywhere in the world, that the people of distinguished ability are fewer in number than those of average ability and those of average ability are obviously less in number than those who are tolerable in point of intelligence and industry. In every one of the Universities of India the number of those who pass in the first division is much less than those who pass in the second division and very much lesser still than those who ass in the third division. This is the verdict of History and the experience of all those concerned with University education in India. Does it not show an absurd state of affairs, if this piece of experience does not apply only to the University of Calcutta and is there any wisdom in clinging to such a ridiculous position? The Matriculation Examination of the Calcutta University is a big joke in University circles at least in Northern India, where there is more knowledge of its affairs and working than in the South, but this is a record of figures startling in its absurdities. It is time the Senators of Calcutta woke up to a realisation of this and set the affairs of their house in order unless some of them argue that there is something in the atmosphere of Bengal justifying a violation of all admitted standards of experience elsewhere and they wish to furnish some amusement to the educational world.
The same journal writes in its recent May number:
“High School and Intermediate Education in Bengal has been notoriously below the standard and it is time things improved.”