In no-exam year, 99.04% clear CBSE Class 10, highest ever – Times of India

As the pass percentage has risen, the number of students with scores between 90% and 95% has also seen a jump to above the two-lakh mark, an increase of 16,604 compared to 2020, constituting about 9.6% of the total students. In the 95% and above bracket, the number stands at 57,824, an increase of over 16,000 in 2020 when exams were conducted.

As the exams could not be held due to the second wave of Covid-19, an alternative assessment policy was adopted, which included both online and offline scores, where 40 marks were for pre-boards, 30 marks for midterm/half-yearly, 10 marks for unit tests and 20 marks assigned to the board’s practical/internal assessment.

For Class 10, there was a moderation policy in place as well. A school had to consider its performance of the past three years and pick the best performing year as a reference. The subject-wise marks of individual students could be within +2/-2 of the reference year. However, the overall average marks of the school could not be more than the marks obtained by the school in the reference year.

Due to the reference year policy, some principals felt that students could have lost a chance to score higher.

Divya Bhatia, principal of Amity International School, Saket, said, “The school results are very good and the average is also high, but due to the historical performance I feel that some students could have scored higher but were restricted because of the reference year results.”

Devasish Tewary of Srijan School, Model Town, said, “The score had to be restricted to the best performance of the school in the last three years. Due to this cap, the student could not have scored more than what the performance was in the last three years. However, the policy was foolproof and it could not have been better formulated.”

However, there are still around 16,639 students whose results have not been declared yet. According to a CBSE official, as schools had made mistakes while uploading the data, the results had been withheld. The board is yet to announce when their results will be declared.

Sticking to the trend of previous years, the performance of girls was better than boys, but the gap was smaller. Girls had a pass percentage of 99.24% and boys were at 98.89%. Students in the transgender category had 100% results.

Schools under the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and Central School Tibetan Administration also had 100% students passing the exams. The pass percentage of government schools jumped to 96.03% from 80.91% in 2020, and for government-aided schools from 77.82% to 95.88%.

In 2020, leaving the schools in northeast Delhi, where riots had taken place the preceding month, Class 10 board exams were conducted for main subjects before the lockdown in March.

Among the regions, Thiruvananthapuram has maintained its top position with 99.99%, followed by Bengaluru at 99.96%. Delhi region’s pass percentage at 98.07% meant it wasn’t in the top five regions, contrary to the Class 12 results.

With no exams this year, the board did not issue a merit list and has also announced that students will get a combined marksheet-cum-pass certificate. Students will also not be receiving merit certificates for having scored 100 marks in different subjects. The board had also announced that if any student wants to raise a dispute over the computation of marks, it will be releasing detailed guidelines soon.