Ahead of the admission season, the government has worked out yet another formula to relax the competition for state board students: reservation of 90 per cent of the seats at junior colleges.

Education Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil announced the proposal in the assembly on Monday and said the feedback from all political parties was positive. If it works this year, it will be implemented next year too, he said.

The move follows the controversy over last year’s “percentile” system, which has run into legal trouble. Under a formula introduced by then education minister Vasant Purke, students were selected according to “percentile” instead of percentage.

But ICSE and CBSE schools alleged loopholes in the method for calculating the percentile for each board. Further, when the announcement that the system would be followed came, admission had already begun.

The parents of an ICSE student moved the Bombay High Court. In September, the High Court quashed the government resolution on the percentile system and asked the state government to arrive at a consensus solution.

The government continued to look for other formulas with the same objective. The argument was that SSC (state board) students needed a better break. There are huge variations between boards in terms of scores; the government feels that ICSE and CBSE have a more high-scoring system and their students are at an advantage over their SSC counterparts.

One formula considered was that the five highest-scoring subjects of each SSC student would be considered for calculating the percentile. However, this was eventually rejected.

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