Malayalam: 1 Russian: 2 Telugu: 3

Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education MSBSHSE is looking to shed some weight The board has decided to remove subjects that have few takers from the SSCHSC exams from next year A proposal in this regard has been sent to the state government and is in the final stages of approval Not enough numbers A proposal for removal of these subjects from the syllabi has been sent to the state government and is in the final stages of approval Representation Pic According to MSBSHSE second and third language subjects like Russian Kannada Telugu and Malayalam have consistently received unflattering response from class X and class XII students across the state over the past many years Thatrsquos why the board has finally decided to shut the doors on these courses Representation Pic ldquoNo other state board or even national board including CBSE has so many subject options which MSBSHSE currently provides students But some courses are not very popular Thatrsquos why we have sent a proposal to the state government to skip certain subjects which will ultimately curtail the overall duration of board examsrdquo said Sarjerao Jadhav chairperson of MSBSHSE For instance this year only five students from across the state appeared for the Kannada paper in the class X exam And while three students turned up for Telugu in SSC only one had chosen Malayalam Similar is the situation with some of the foreign languages Only two examinees in the state had chosen Russian language for std X ldquoWhen the number of students selecting a particular subject does not even get into double digits it is very difficult to run the whole process of setting papers and conducting exams When a single student appears for a certain subject maintaining his or her anonymity and even conducting reevaluation is toughrdquo told Krishnakumar Patil secretary of MSBSHSE According to set procedures while preparing the timetable the state board has to maintain a gap of a few days between two papers Apart from this MSBSHSE also has to publish four sets of question papers fro every subject to avert malpractices Carrying out these responsibilities for subjects that only have a handful of candidates is a tiresome exercise said sources ldquoI have been part of the papersetting team for board exams I know how tiresome an exercise it is So if the state board is planning to curtail some of the subjects based on consistently low number of students appearing for the examinations it is the right steprdquo said Gayatri Gumaste a teacher of Sanskrit Marathi and German Dr Durga Dixit director of Aikyabharati Research Institute had a different opinion ldquoIf some subjects especially Indian languages are getting a poor response from schools itrsquos the responsibility of the state board to promote them rather than shutting them down Languages are the only source to understand the culture of various states and to nurture national integrityrdquo he said ldquoEvery child should ideally learn his or her mother tongue On the other hand migration has also increased in the past years So closing down the option for studying other Indian languages is not at all the solutionrdquo said Uma Padmanabhi who teaches Kannada out of passionu00a0