UAE | Education

Schools warned against backing proxy attendance

Affiliation will be cancelled if schools under the Indian Central Board are found to promote proxy attendance warned Ashok Ganguly, the chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

  • By Sunita Menon, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 00:05 July 21, 2008
  • Gulf News

Dubai: Affiliation will be cancelled if schools under the Indian Central Board are found to promote proxy attendance warned Ashok Ganguly, the chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

Proxy attendance is a common practice among schools whereby grade 12 pupils are allowed to stay away from school and get coaching for various competitive examinations, keeping their school attendance intact.

Ganguly also discouraged schools from giving provisional admissions to pupils of other local schools in grade 11.

There are 9,581 CBSE affiliated schools of which 110 are in the Gulf and 52 in the UAE. According to Indian school principals in the UAE the trend of proxy attendance is more rampant in India and not in CBSE affiliated schools overseas. They, however, agreed that some degree of provisional admissions or "poaching" of good pupils does go on by CBSE affiliated schools in the UAE.

A CBSE affiliated school principal who spoke about "poaching" on condition of anonymity said exceptional pupils in Grade 10 were often sought out by another school and offered admissions.

"This is being done to increase quality. In some cases scholarships are awarded to lure these brilliant pupils from other schools," he said. "But with regard to proxy admissions it is not happening here. There is no scope for such a trend to exist because pupils who pass out from CBSE affiliated schools overseas get admitted to reputed Indian colleges through the designated seats reserved for them."

Ashok Kumar, principal, Indian High School, said the main reason for schools to indulge in providing proxy attendance for its pupils is to get the reputation that they have got admission in reputed colleges.

"For example under proxy attendance pupils are able to stay at home and prepare for their grade 12 as well as attend outside coaching for their competitive examinations. Schools who encourage such a trend have no problem at all as they get their fees," said Kumar.

He said that the Indian High School has appointed a parent relations officer who gets in touch with respective parents when his or her child is not attending school on a particular day.

SMS system

"We are now going to introduce a system whereby the attendance of all pupils will be sent to parents through SMS."

John Mathai, principal Our Own High School (boys) Al Wa'rqaa said that provisional admissions do not take place in any of the schools managed by the Global Management Systems (GEMS).

"Nothing of that sort happens in any of our schools, if it happens in other schools I am not aware of that," he said.

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