Girls clinch top 3 spots
MOHALI: Girls outshone boys and clinched the top three spots in the Punjab Board Class 10 exams, the results of which were declared on Friday. The Class 12 board exams, declared by Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) on Wednesday, also saw a similar trend with girls outperforming boys and bagging the top three positions.
The girls clinched the top 10 positions in the state. Divyanshu Kumar of Himgiri Senior Secondary School Mundian Kalan in Ludhiana secured 11th rank on the merit list.
Gagandeep Kaur from Sant Mohan Das Memorial Senior Secondary School, Kot Sukhia, Faridkot, topped the state scoring 100%. Navjot from the same school stood second scoring 648 marks out of 650.
Harmandeep Kaur from Government High School, Mandhali, Mansa, stood third by scoring 646 marks out of 650.
Pathankot was at the top among the districts with a 99.19% pass percentage, while Kapurthala stood second with 99.2%, and Amritsar was placed third with a pass percentage of 98.97%. Barnala came last in the list of 23 districts with a pass percentage of 95.96%.
Punjabi proves to be Achilles’ heel for a few
While the government is making a concerted effort to promote the mother tongue in the state, Punjabi proved to be Achilles’ heel for the class 10 students. As many as 2,265 students failed in the Punjabi subject out of the 2,81,267 candidates who appeared for the exams, while 2,176 students flunked English.
As many as 1,041 students failed to clear the exam in Hindi, while 750 students from across the states failed in mathematics.
Government schools fare better
PSEB vice-chairman Varinder Bhatia said that the overall pass percentage was 97.54%, while the pass percentage of government schools stood at 97.76%. The pass percentage of private schools was 97%.
Similarly, schools in rural areas have done better as compared to schools in urban areas with a pass percentage of 97.94% and 96.77%, respectively. Out of the total 2,81,327 candidates appearing for class 10 exams, only 653 students failed, while 6,171 students will have to re-appear. The results of 103 students have been withheld.
40k dip in the number of students
The academic year 2022-23 witnessed a dip of 39,836 students appearing for exams. In the 2022 session, 3,11,545 students appeared for the exams. COVID cleared the backlog: On the other hand, board officials requesting anonymity said that an unprecedentedly high pass percentage during the COVID period led to the clearing of the backlog. “In the academic year 2019- 20 the pass percentage was 85.56 %, while during the COVID period of 2020-21 and 2021- 22 the pass percentage soared to 99.93 and 99.06 %, nearly 14% higher than 2019-20, which cleared the backlog of students leading to a dip in the number of candidate appearing in the academic session of 2022-23,” said the education department official.