Candidates who appeared for the Intermediate public exams during 2005-06 or earlier and failed to clear the exams so far will be given a last chance in the March 2010 exams.  If they fail to clear the papers this time too, the students will have to appear for all the papers of both first and second year in 2011 to secure the Intermediate pass certificate.

The decision was taken as part of the reforms introduced by the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) from the exams in March 2010. The BIE has fixed a ceiling of five years to clear all papers.

"The BIE was set up in 1972. Several students are still struggling to clear the papers. This has turned out to be a big problem for us to verify their previous records dating back decades. For this reason, we decided to fix an upper ceiling of five years to clear all the papers from this year," said Mr G.Balaramaiah, secretary, BIE. The BIE is also facing problems in preparing question papers for old candidates based on the syllabus that existed at that time.

"The syllabus and the exam pattern was entirely different. It was later changed from time to time.
It has become difficult to prepare question papers for old students by tracking their old records. It is time consuming. There is also no point wasting time for such students whose number will be just in hundreds," he said.

Some teacher unions have opposed the move."The government aims to increase the enrolment ratio to 15 per cent in the next five years. If restrictions are introduced, it will result in more dropouts,"  said Mr Narayana, president, AP United Teachers Federation.