Hyderabad: Despite the increase in suicides on account of exam stress, officials of the Board of Intermediate Education and the SSC Board are sitting on a proposal to set up helplines for students, with expert counsellors to handle them. There are about 18 lakh students appearing for Inter exams, while nearly 13 lakh students who appear for SSC exams every year.
Since the last few years, the CBSE has been successfully running helplines to help students cope with exam stress. The CBSE's free helpline facility has now been extended to JEE (Main) aspirants too.
In AP, Inter board exams have become huge stress triggers for many students since 2008, when the state government decided to give 25 per cent weightage for Inter marks in Eamcet.
Similarly, scoring high marks in SSC assumed great significance with the setting up of three new IIITs in Basar, Nuzividu and Idupulapaya in 2008. Admissions to these institutes are given purely on marks scored in the SSC exam; there is no separate entrance test.
Another stress factor is that fact that students are eligible for huge fee concessions in corporate junior colleges if they secure high marks in SSC.
There is another rule that states that 40 per cent weightage will be given for Inter marks in JEE (Main) and top-20 percentile in Inter exams for JEE (Advanced). Introduced last year, this has only made stress levels worse for the students, especially inter students.
The number of students committing suicide before the commencement of exams and after the declaration of results has been steadily increasing over the past five years. While 6 suicide cases were reported in 2008, it was 22 in 2013. One needs to factor in the reality that many cases go unreported.
In 2011, the state government had asked the officials to consider setting up helplines, along the lines of the CBSE helpline, at the state and district levels. There has been no movement on this front so far.
