Chennai region CBSE students rank second

While the all-India pass percentage was 82.02%, a point lower than last year’s 83.05%, students from Thiruvananthapuram region came out with flying colours, achieving a pass percentage of 95.62%, the highest in the country. The third place was bagged by Delhi with 88.37%. In Tamil Nadu, around 15,000 students from more than 200 schools had taken the board exams. 

This year, around 10, 651, 79 candidates registered for the exams, 2.38 % more than 2016. Around 10,98,891 candidates from 10,678 schools registered for the examination, out of which 6,38,865 boys and 4,60,026 girls took the exams. As expected, girls outshone with a pass percentage of 87.5% as compared to 78% of the boys. Among the differently abled students, 2,449 took the exams out of which 2,123 passed, making the pass percentage to 86.69%. 

Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya students topped the chart with an overall pass percentage of 95.73 followed by the Kendriya Vidyalayas who boasted of an overall pass percentage of 94.60. Government and government-aided schools secured a pass percentage of 82.29% and 81.63%, respectively. CBSE also opened helpline number 1800118004 with 60 counsellors for students. 

Talented keyboard player Raksha Gopal struck all the right chords and ended up with the highest score of 99.6% marks in the CBSE exams. Raksha, a humanities student at Amity International School, Noida, said she was expecting a “good” result but was surprised to find that she was just two marks short of a perfect 100. She is keen to study political science in the University of Delhi.

Dharshana, a visually impaired student of Nalanda international Public School in Krishnagiri, secured the third rank in the differently abled category with 483 marks. The 18-year-old, who wishes to become an entrepreneur, said, “My school helped me prepare for the examinations. I didn’t go to a special school. I was treated like any other kid.” Despite having no vision in her right eye and with partial sight in the left eye, she chose to write the paper by herself and used a magnifying glass to read the question paper.