ALLAHABAD: Girls outshone boys in the high school and intermediate exams conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Board, results for which were declared here today even as the number of appearing candidates and pass percentage of class 10th and 12th declined this year.
Secondary Education Director Amarnath Verma said around 30 lakh candidates appeared in the high school examinations and the overall pass percentage stood at 81.18 percent while about 25 lakh students appeared for intermediate out of which 82.62 percent secured the passing marks.
However, there was a drop in the number of candidates who appeared for the exams and their pass percentage compared with the previous year when 32.6 lakh students had appeared for the high school and 29.2 lakh for the intermediate exams, with the respective pass percentages of 87.66 and 87.99, Verma said.
Girls came up with better pass percentage than the boys in both the examinations.
The girls' success rate for High School was 86.50 against the boys' 76.75 percent, he said.
For intermediate, the boys' pass percentage (77.16) was similarly lower than that of girls (88.80).
Notably, toppers for both high school and intermediate happened to be from the district of Fatehpur.
Tejaswi Devi topped the high school exams with 95.83 percent marks while Priyanshi Tiwari scored 96.20 percent, topping the in the intermediate, Verma said.
Interestingly, the second position in intermediate was shared by three girls - two of them from Fatehpur itself and another from Kanpur (rural).
For high school, the second position was shared by two girls - both of them students of the Lucknow Public HSS at Madhoganj in Hardoi district.
Among the candidates who secured passing marks, a total of 105 wrote their exams while lodged in jails in various cases.
Among these, 49 passed their high school exams while 56 cleared their intermediate tests.