CHENNAI: Plus Two students, other than those in the State Board stream, will have to appear for an entrance examination for admission to professional courses. The State Government will enact a law to this effect soon.

"This government has decided to follow the basic principle, namely, the Plus Two marks of the State Board will be the common platform for evaluation... There will be a common entrance examination for students of all other Boards so that they are brought on a comparable basis to the State Board Plus Two marks," Governor Surjit Singh Barnala said in his address at the opening of the Assembly's concluding session here on Friday, which was boycotted by the main Opposition parties.

Speaker K.Kalimuthu read out the Tamil version of the address. "This will achieve both the objectives of less burden and trauma for bulk of the students who take the State Board examination, as also the provision of a correct method to bring all other Board examinations on to a comparable platform to the State Board Plus Two marks," he said.

Maintaining that the Government's decision to abolish the common entrance test could not be implemented because of "certain regulations" of the Medical Council of India and the All-India Council for Technical Education, the Governor said the Centre had been requested to amend the regulations. "Parents and students have expressed a request that the prevailing uncertainty should be removed and a clear scheme based on the Plus Two marks of the State Board should be evolved."

New schools

A total of 1,274 new primary schools were opened since 2001 and 2,790 primary schools upgraded to middle schools. As many as 394 middle schools had been upgraded to high schools and 406 high schools to higher secondary schools. The Government filled up 58,282 teacher posts, he said.

He said a scheme to make the quality of technical education world class in engineering and polytechnic colleges was being implemented on an outlay of Rs. 96 crore. There were 237 engineering colleges and 230 polytechnics in the State.

Software exports up

Software exports from the State stood at Rs.10, 730 crore in 2004-05, recording a 40 per cent increase over the previous year. Last year, a total of 400 Information Technology firms set up shop in the State.

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