Chandigarh’s CBSE Class XII pass percentage drops by 3%; science streams see major decline

Chandigarh: Chandigarh’s CBSE Class XII pass percentage fell by 3.03% points this year. While the medical and non-medical streams recorded declines of over eight and 10 percentage points, respectively, the number of students scoring above 90% nearly doubled.

The UT recorded an overall Class XII pass percentage of 92.29% in 2026 compared to 95.32% last year. Nationally, the CBSE pass percentage dropped from 88.39% to 85.20%.

Data released by the Chandigarh education department for government senior secondary schools showed a similar trend. Overall pass percentage in government schools declined from 88.79% last year to 87.25% this year. Of the 10,255 students who appeared, 8,948 passed.

The sharpest decline was recorded in science streams.

Medical stream pass percentage dropped from 93.25% in 2025 to 82.88% this year, marking a fall of 10.37 percentage points. Non-medical declined from 87.71% to 79.06%, while commerce dropped from 92.05% to 88.92%.

Humanities emerged as the only mainstream stream to improve, with pass percentage increasing from 86.50% last year to 87.94%. Skill courses recorded the best performance overall at 97.17%, improving from 94.68% in the previous session.

The results come amid major changes in CBSE’s evaluation process. This year, the board implemented ‘on screen marking’ (OSM) for Class XII answer sheets and expanded competency-based assessment under NEP-2020, with greater focus on conceptual understanding and application-based questions instead of rote learning. Officials linked the nationwide decline in results to the stricter assessment pattern.

Despite the fall in overall pass percentages, the number of high scorers increased sharply.

Students securing 90% and above rose from 225 last year to 348 this year. Similarly, those scoring above 95% nearly doubled from 29 to 57.

Two schools recorded pass percentages above 95%, while 16 schools crossed the 90% mark.

Girls once again outperformed boys. Among government school candidates, girls recorded a pass percentage of 90.55%, compared to 84.51% among boys.

The results point towards a widening gap between streams in Chandigarh’s Class XII performance this year. While science and commerce subjects saw a significant drop in pass percentages under the stricter evaluation pattern, humanities and skill courses registered improvement, even as the number of students scoring above 90% and 95% rose sharply despite the overall decline.