Exactly a month after the Bihar’s education department issued a resolution to end intermediate education in all three streams of Arts, Science and Commerce in colleges under different state universities, it relaxed the norms on Thursday through a notification after protests by students in different parts of the state.
Now, the students studying in the colleges in the 2023-25 session will have the choice of switching over to secondary schools after the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) gives them the option in Class 12 or continuing in the same institution.
By an earlier order, it was mandatory for all class 11 students in colleges to switch over to higher secondary schools, for which even the Bihar Board had not made any provision for such students.
This triggered protests by students, who reached BJP office on Thursday, and Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary, sensing the gravity, assured to look into their demands, as they had already completed half their course in colleges.
A letter to this effect was issued by the secondary education director on Thursday evening after a meeting with the Vihar board, where it came to light that the option had so far been not given to college students pursuing intermediate in the Online Facilitation System for Students (OFSS) portal, which went live from March 21.
The fresh notification means that intermediate in the colleges would continue for one more year for completing the course of rhetoric 2023-25 batches, though they would not be taking fresh admission in 2024-2026 batch, and would be completed phased out from colleges only from next year.
The department had on February 21 issued a resolution that intermediate education will now be imparted in higher secondary schools only from the new session starting April 1, 2024. The resolution was also notified in the state gazette.
The government had in 2007, during the tenure of late Madan Mohan Jha as principal secretary of the erstwhile Human Resource development department, taken a policy decision to phase out intermediate education from colleges to conform to the 1986 National Education Policy of 10+2+3 and introduced CBSE format in plus two from 2007-09 batch
With the dissolution of the Bihar Intermediate Council and revamping of the Bihar School Examination Board, Bihar also had one integrated board for both Class 10 and plus two, in line with the CBSE and ICSE.
It was in 2007 itself that Patna University became the first university in the State to delink intermediate from its degree colleges. The process was to be continued for other universities, but it took another 17 years to implement the policy.
