Boys ahead of girls in BSE

CUTTACK: Breaking records of five years, the Class X results of the Board of Secondary Education, which were published on Tuesday, was a cakewalk all the way. A pass percentage of 63.41 per cent was recorded this time, the highest in the past five years. Last year the percentage was 53.14 while in 2007 it was 59.09. The upward trend in marks has brought cheer not only to students and also to board authorities.
"The results are overwhelming.Right evaluation has resulted in good performance. For the first time an awareness drive was created among evaluators for the right assessment. Experienced teachers were involved in the process. These steps have yielded positive results," said Dharanidhar Nath, president, BSE.
"It's also a fact students were less burdened this time since they were assessed on a total of 800 marks in place of 600. They had less to study and so performed better," claimed board authorities.
Breaking the trend, boys were better than the girls this time. Recording a pass percentage of 65.42, they were ahead of the girls who secured 61.26 per cent. Around 3,97,234 students appeared for the tests in 1,722 centres. Out of this figure, 43,765 secured first division, which is almost double of last year's. In 2008, only 27,968 students managed to secure first division.
Results of only 425 students were withheld in comparison to last year's 13,000. Board officials faced a lot of criticism for the backlog but this time they have managed to bring the number down drastically. "We have tried our best to make the results error free. The results which have been held back, will be declared within 15 days," said Nihar Mohapatra, secretary, BSE.
Instead of focusing on the top 10, the board has published a list of the 100 best. Among the 100 best, 64 are boys while 38 are girls. Bibek Bishal Mehena of Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Rourkela, and Sanket Dash of Saraswati Sishu Vidya Mandir of Ramaharinagar bagged first position jointly with 95.6 per cent. Similarly, Anshuman Tripathy of Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Balangir, and Subhashree Rout of Kalinga Vidyapeeth, Choudwar, occupied second position with 95.5 per cent. Bidyasabitru Nayak of Saraswati Vidyamandir, Salipur, occupied third position with 95.3 per cent.Credit goes to around 250 schools for securing 100 per cent success. At the same time, the number of schools scoring zero, has decreased to 65 from 73. Students booked for malpractices was also lower this time in comparison to previous years. Last year 47,68 students were booked for malpractice while the number is 30,77 this time.
Even Scheduled Tribe and Schedule Caste students fared well. SC students secured a percentage of 53.47 while last year it was 41.74. Similarly, ST students recorded a percentage of 49.8.