The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed a batch of writ petitions filed by Class X students, challenging the methodology adopted by the School Education Department to award marks to them, this year, for public examinations that stood cancelled due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh refused to entertain the cases after observing that the court should not unnecessarily poke its nose in every other policy decision taken by the government, unless the decision was found to be arbitrary, irrational or actuated by malice or bias.
“These are areas which should be safely left within the domain of governance and the courts must be very slow to interfere with such decisions,” the judge said. The judge pointed out that the government had decided to adopt a particular method only in the interest of the students.
“It may be possible that some of the students are not happy with the method adopted by the government, or it is also possible that there are some alternative or effective methods available to award marks. That by itself cannot be a ground for this court to interfere,” he said.
The judge pointed out the government had actually decided to declare all State board Class X students to have passed the public examination this year, even without writing it, and award 80% of marks on the basis of their half-yearly and quarterly examination scores.
The rest of 20% of marks were to be awarded on the basis of their attendance.
However, the petitioners claimed that it took time for them to get acclimatised with the new syllabus, and, hence, marks scored by them in the last revision test should be taken into consideration. Some of the students also stated that 30% of marks should be awarded for attendance.
