Beyond JEE Toppers: Four Underprivileged from Dumka crack JEE Mains 2023

Sampurna Shiksha Kavach program brings equitable access to quality education and enables Dumka students to aim for top engineering and medical institutions

“My dream is to become an IITian. I was able to learn from expert teachers, they instilled confidence in me. I thank the Dumka District Administration for arranging the classes and after-school learning support for enhancing my self-study,’’ said Ankit Kumar Ram, a student of 2 Government Zilla School, Dumka who has cleared JEE Mains 2023. Ankit is one of the four students from the villages of Dumka namely Anand Kumar, Ankit Kumar Ram, Priyanshu Jaiswal, and Shivam Anand who were able to achieve the remarkable feat, overcoming challenges that students from low-income rural households face. 

We often hear about children from Delhi, Mumbai Bengaluru scoring high in national level competitive exam like NEET-UG or JEE Mains and this year also as many as 43 candidates have scored 100 percentile in JEE (Main) 2023. However far from this limelight, in the rural district of Dumka in northeast Jharkhand, a government-run tech-driven accelerated learning program named Sampurna Shiksha Kavach has enabled four students to achieve remarkable success in JEE Mains Exam.

Sampurna Shiksha Kavach program brings equitable access to quality education and enables Dumka students to aim for top engineering and medical institutions.

The AI technology driven program identifies the learning gaps that have accumulated over the years. On identifying the gaps, students are provided instant-teaching to accelerate their learning growth.

Due to limited resources, these students from low-income households were unable to prepare for their Class 12 Board exams, let alone the highly competitive university entrance tests.

Cracking JEE Mains 2023

The program has helped students crack one of the toughest exams in the country, and obtained ranks that were once unattainable, said Ravi Shankar Shukla, District Commissioner, Dumka. The four students from the villages of Dumka namely Anand Kumar, Ankit Kumar Ram, Priyanshu Jaiswal, and Shivam Anand were able to achieve the remarkable feat, overcoming challenges that students from low-income rural households face. Following their success, they are now enrolled to train for the JEE Advanced exam.

The educational program to empower rural students was launched by the Dumka district administration helmed by Ravi Shankar Shukla, DC and Karn Satyarthi, then DDC in September 2022, with a specific aim to build students’ interest in science education. The tribal district has shortage of subject specific teachers including Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, which for long affected students' preparedness for highly competitive university entrance exams.

The government's accelerated-learning based program has been a resounding success, according to recent data. The program has brought about significant improvement in learning outcomes of students, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds in the district by providing them equitable access to quality education. As part of this program, students were taught by subject experts to not just bridge learning gaps but to build on the foundation and be further driven to excel in the subject. The Students who benefited from this program also got unlimited access to teachers round the clock even on Sundays.

“My dream is to become an IITian. I was able to learn from expert teachers, they instilled confidence in me. I thank the Dumka District Administration for arranging the classes and after-school learning support for enhancing my self-study,’’ said Ankit Kumar Ram, a student of 2 Government Zilla School, Dumka.

This program was designed with an intent to build students’ interest in science education. As their interest peaked, the students’ started harboring career aspirations, which is reflected by achievements of the four students who cleared IIT JEE Mains. It’s only this year that Class 11 and 12 students from public schools in Dumka started to study to qualify for top engineering and medical institutions.

According to Shukla, the program was designed to build equity in education. “We wanted to go beyond the existing asynchronous video-based learning solutions and thus initiated an interactive instant teaching model in our schools,” he said.

The success of these 4 students is now giving hope to over 2,000 students from 26 government schools in Dumka, Shukla said, adding that the program provides tools and resources needed to achieve admission in prestigious engineering or medical institutions of the country.

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