July 17: The excitement and accolades over this year's board examination toppers may have died down. But one harsh truth refuses to. For well over two decades, Mumbai has failed to produce a single state-level topper in the SSC and HSC examinations.

This year, for instance, students from Sholapur and Amravati topped the state SSC and HSC merit lists. This may be shocking, considering the enviable concentration of schools and colleges in the city and a profusion of profit-making coaching classes, whose credibility at churning out toppers is reaffirmed after every exam. Why then is a city which, on the surface of it, boasts of the right infrastructural facilities, unable to make to the top grade?

Ramakant Pandey, principal of Bansidhar Agarwal School and Junior College and board member, held that unlike Mumbai's students, who are exposed to distractions like the mass media, ``Students in districts have little else to do but study.''

The quality of teaching also came in for flak. Several principals observed that due to the mushrooming of coaching classes, better teachers would rather teach there than at schools and colleges.

Strangely, the much coveted English-medium schools rarely figure in the merit list. This was attributed by the principal of Sir J J Girl's High School, H N Pal, to the inadequate number of examiners from English-medium schools despite the board's bid to have a compulsory number of teachers from each school as examiners. ``The examiners checking papers from these schools are not very proficient in English themselves, hence students suffer.

``South Mumbai schools, predominantly English-medium or convents, are repeatedly faring badly. This year, some of them are going to voice their grievances with the board.''

A member of the board for seven years and ex-principal of St Xavier's High School, Vile Parle, Father Gregory Lobo, blamed this on the language pattern. ``English-medium schools have elaborate language papers, whereas other schools have composite papers, which being objective in nature can give students high score.''

G M Dabholkar, principal of Balmohan Vidyamandir which has been topping the city list for many years, cast doubts on the evaluation system of different divisional boards. He recalled a couple of years back a Pune-based magazine Dahavi Diwali had published answer papers of both the Mumbai topper and his Latur counterpart. Mumbai student's effort was qualitatively better than that of the Latur topper, yet the top honours went to the Latur student.

A R Motlekar, vice-president of the Association of Mumbai Heads of Secondary Schools, attributed the success of district students over the city ones to the `Latur pattern', whereby the syllabus is selectively taught, leaving room for repeated revisions and test series. He also implicated the high teacher-student ratio in Mumbai as compared to other boards, which can touch 1: 80-120.

Judging by these remarks, an infrastructural overhaul must necessarily accompany an attitudinal one if Mumbai's students are to top the list. And break the two decade-long jinx.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.