Dip in HSC pass percentage

CUTTACK: Sarthak Pradhan of Saraswati Vidyamandir, Balangir, topped the annual High School Certificate (HSC) examination as around 63 per cent of the students made their grades this year. Sarthak scored 97.66 per cent while Debasish Pradhan of Angul High School, Angul, came second with 97 per cent. Tarunkanti Behera of Saraswati Shishu Bidya Mandir, Ramaharinagar, secured third with 96.66 per cent. The results, announced by the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) on Saturday, marked a dip in success rate compared with last year when the overall pass percentage was 69.17. The pass percentage in the regular stream also slipped to 66.75 per cent from the record high of 71.74 per cent last year. The fall in pass percentage has been on account of strong action initiated against cheating and malpractice during the examination. The crackdown and raids had seen an unprecedented 7,030 bookings under malpractice this year. Checking malpractice could be a contributor to the results even though ups and downs in the percentage are normal, BSE president Satyakam Mishra said. As many as 4,75,345 students had appeared for the matriculation examination this year of whom 2,94,498 passed. About 54,666 students got first division, 78,674 second and 1,60,906 third division. Around 274 schools have shown 100 per cent results while the schools with nil result have shot up to 193 from 43 last year. The Government schools have registered 68.36 pass percentage while aided schools have achieved 67.29, block grant schools 61.89 and unaided schools 67.01 pass percentage. In the regular stream, 4,15,037 students had appeared for the examination with 2,73,888 making their grades. As many as 54,464 students achieved first division, 76,902 second and 1,42,354 got third division. Boys, with pass percentage of 68.75, edged past girls, with pass percentage of 64.73. Dhenkanal emerged as the best performing district with 79.55 per cent  making the mark while Kandhamal continued to be at the bottom with 49.19 per cent results. The SC and ST categories fared almost on a par with each other with 56.71 and 56.11 per cent results respectively. In the ex-regular stream, students posted a success rate of 37.45 per cent with 17,423 of the 49,252 students making their grades. The Correspondence Course regular and Correspondence Course ex-regular notched pass percentage of 31.07 and 23.29 respectively.

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