This year, only 88,000 students have opted for standard maths while the lion’s share of 8 lakh students have opted for basic maths in Class 10 in Gujarat. This comes to 22,000 less students opting for advanced version of maths as compared to 1.10 lakh students who had chosen standard maths in 2022 while 6.61 lakh had preferred to go with basic maths.
Last year, the Gujarat government had introduced an option for Class 10 students to choose between basic or standard maths. The choice was given with an eye on cutting down on fail percentage in maths which has ranged between 40-50 percent in past results.
Mathematics faculty members say that the overwhelming majority of students giving standard maths a miss is indicative of growing fear of the subject.
Meanwhile, the shrinking number of students pursuing standard maths is already giving headaches to self-finance colleges running engineering and other technical courses as students in Class 10 this year will take admission in colleges in the next two to three years.
The big concern for these colleges is that fewer students opting for science could mean more vacant seats in their colleges in the future. In 2022, some 50% of the 70,000-odd degree engineering seats have remained vacant.
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