If you believe that Tamil Nadu’s school education system does not prepare students enough for higher education, here is one more reason you could be right. About 50 per cent of the students who appeared for first-year engineering examination failed in Physics this year, according to The New Indian Express.

About 1.08 lakh students appeared for the physics paper this year, which was conducted in April and May, and out of them only 52,000 passed.

According to the results provided by the Anna University, about 45 per cent of the first- year students failed in Mathematics and 38 per cent in Chemistry, the TNIE report notes.

The results of undergraduate and post-graduate courses of Anna University were announced last week. In Mathematics about 1.09 lakh students had appeared and only 60,359 students cleared the examination.

TNIE reported that in that particular year only five students had scored centum and about 37,600 students in Tamil Nadu had failed to even get the minimum pass mark.

A senior official from Anna University told TNIE that many students learn from the guides instead of understanding basic concepts of the subject.

Last year, according to an RTI, it was said that 50 per cent of the students who appear for math paper in their first year of college failed and the educationists had claimed that 90 per cent of them were from state board.

A professor from an engineering college in Coimbatore told The Times of India that engineering mathematics, physics and material science are analytical subjects and students find it very difficult to clear these subjects.

Edit: Some numerical corrections have been made.