Statements: The school authority has asked the X Std. students to attend…

Concept: In a cause-and-effect reasoning item, two statements are given and the task is to judge whether one statement's event plausibly and directly triggers the action in the other, whether the two are unrelated (independent) events, or whether both are separate effects of some third, unstated cause. The test is simple: does one statement supply a direct, motivated reason for what happens in the other?

Application: Statement I reports that the school authority asked X Std. students to attend special classes on Sundays. Statement II reports that parents withdrew their wards from private tuitions held on Sundays. Since the school's special classes and the private tuitions fall on the same day, a student could not attend both; the parents withdrawing their wards from tuitions is a direct, motivated response to the school's own scheduling instruction. Statement I therefore precedes and explains Statement II — it is the cause, and Statement II is its effect.

Cross-check (why the other readings fail):

• Reverse direction (II causes I): a private tuition arrangement made by parents has no way of prompting a school authority's own class schedule, so causation cannot run this way.

• Independent causes: this needs the two decisions to arise from entirely unrelated reasons, but both are tied to the same Sunday slot — a shared reference that links them rather than leaving them coincidental.

• Both effects of a third cause: this needs some unstated trigger behind each event separately, but no such external cause is given — the shared Sunday reference shows one statement explaining the other, not two isolated outcomes.

Since the direct, motivated link runs from the school's instruction to the parents' withdrawal, Statement I is the cause and Statement II is its effect.