Several private college authorities in India’s Agra are in trouble for gross irregularities, after the BEd exams results announced that 20,000 students have passed it while only 12,800 appeared for it.

A probe ordered by the vice-chancellor of BR Ambedkar University is underway, reported Times of India.

Final exam results are yet to come.

‘Varsity spokesperson Prof Manoj Srivastava said VC Mohd Muzammil has instituted a committee to probe the issue. The university has issued letters to private colleges where these ghost students allegedly studied.’

‘The matter of 7,000 suspicious students came to light when the private agency preparing the BEd results objected that they only had the data of around 12,800 students while copies of over 20,000 students were checked,’ Srivastava said.

‘Private colleges have claimed that they had taken more students against seats lying vacant and these extra students also took the exam’, reported The Huffington Post.

‘The BEd test results in Agra also highlight a major problem in the country — the quality of teachers. After passing the BEd exam, many are hired by schools as educationists.’

‘If these students did not even appear for the exam, how do they plan to teach other students?’

‘In April this year, images of parents scaling the walls of an exam centre to help students cheat had shamed Bihar. However, what was worse was that the evaluators checking answer sheets would also need help to pass exams. Teachers couldn't spell 'Shakespeare', the Maths teacher did not know how to explain the relevance of Pythagoras.’

‘In July, about 3,000 schoolteachers in Bihar, who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get jobs resigned. The teachers resigned following the Patna high court directive to the state government earlier to ask the school teachers, who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get the jobs, to resign or face legal action.’