— Photo:Sandeep Saxena

ON CLOUD NINE: Students celebrating after CBSE X class results were declared in New Delhi on Tuesday.

NEW DELHI: The Class X results announced by the Central Board of Secondary Education on Tuesday have shown an overall improvement of 7.28 per cent, the highest increase in recent times. The overall pass percentage this year is 84.44 compared to 77.16 in 2006.

"In 2003, the pass percentage was 68 per cent, in 2004 it was 72 per cent, 74.6 per cent in 2005 and 77.16 per cent last year. So this year has seen the highest increase in the overall pass percentage in recent times," said CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly after declaring the results for the Delhi, Guwahati, Allahabad and Panchkula regions at a press conference here.

"The increase in pass percentage has mainly been because of three reasons: good ambience and stress-free environment; introduction of an internal assessment system in Mathematics and restructured question papers in Mathematics and Social Science," said Mr. Ganguly.

Girls have fared better than boys in all regions, barring Guwahati, though the difference in their overall pass percentage is marginal. The pass percentage for girls this year is 84.72 and for boys 84.24.

The Ajmer region has topped with a brilliant pass percentage of 93.87, followed closely by Chennai with 93.47.

The Class X results for Ajmer and Chennai were announced on Monday. In all, 705, 857 students registered for the Class X examinations this year — an increase of 8.93 per cent over last year.

The pass percentage for regular students also witnessed an increase from 79.56 in 2006 to 87.94 this year. On the other hand, the pass percentage for private or "patrachar" students has declined from 28.81 in 2006 to 26.74 now.

Students of Government-run schools have done remarkably well this year. The pass percentage of candidates from such institutions has shot up by 16.29 — from 54.07 in 2006 to 70.36 this year.

The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have done exceptionally well with its candidates achieving an overall pass percentage of 96.41 compared with 91.13 in 2006.

Kendriya Vidyalayas are at the second spot with 95.64 pass percentage, registering an increase of 5.01 percentage points compared with 2006.

Candidates from foreign countries and the Gulf region have achieved a pass percentage of 96.70 and 96.68 respectively. The total number of merit certificates issued by the CBSE this year is almost double that of the past year — a whopping 11,162 compared with 5,683 in 2006. Of these, 101 and 26 certificates have been awarded to students of Government and Government-aided schools across the country.

Explaining this trend, Mr. Ganguly said: "This is because of the introduction of the 40-mark practical component in Science for Class X. It was a different way of assessment of students. It helped to evaluate how much hands-on knowledge the students had about their practicals."

As many as 2,923 candidates — 1,619 girls and 1,304 boys — scored 95 per cent and above marks in the Class X examination, while 28,187 students — comprising 13,976 girls and 14,211 boys — touched the 90 per cent and above bracket this year.

Sixteen disabled candidates have secured more than 90 per cent marks this year.

The number of girls securing 60 per cent or more marks has increased to 156,887 this year from 138,424 in 2006.

Scholarships will be awarded to single girl children who have scored more than 60 per cent marks, said Mr. Ganguly.

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