PATNA: Almost half of the students in Bihar who appeared in the matriculation (class X) examinations have failed, thanks to the unprecedented strict measures adopted to eliminate cheating during the examinations.
Only 50.12 per cent of the 17.23 lakh matriculation examinees emerged successful this year, as per the results announced by Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) on Thursday. The low pass percentage, despite a grace marks of eight granted to all examinees, was reminiscent of the Class 12 results in the state announced last month, in which 70 per cent Science students and 76 per cent Arts students failed.
Elaborate steps taken by BSEB this year to end the menace of rampant cheating in the examinations are said to have led to such drastic fall in the pass percentage. The state’s education system came under attack from various quarters as the overall pass percentage of Class 10 examinations this year was only around 3 per cent higher than last year.
Before the results were announced after being postponed twice earlier, the top ten achievers were subjected to rigorous verification exercises by Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) to avert a topper’s scam like in the class 12 results last month.
BSEB chairperson Anand Kishore said 13.91 per cent students secured first division, 26.88 per cent second division and 9.32 per cent third division. Of the students who passed, 49.6 per cent are boys.
Prem Kumar, a student of Sree Govind High School in Lakhisarai district, was the topper with 93 per cent marks (465 out of total 500), while Bhavya Kumari of Simultala Residential School in Jamui district came second with 92.8 marks followed by Harshita Kumari, of the same school, with 92.4 per cent marks. Interestingly, six of the top ten achievers were from Simultala Residential School.
The first topper would get a cash award of Rs 1 lakh, a laptop and an e-book reader from the state government as part of incentives announced earlier. Rs 50,000, a laptop and an e-book reader would be given to the second topper while the third topper will get Rs 15,000, a laptop and an e-book reader, said officials.
“Apart from strict measures to prevent cheating during the examinations, several innovative steps were adopted for the first time this year, such as bar-coding of answer sheets and decentralized evaluation of answer sheets.
In fact, there are 21 students in the top 10 ranks this year, and 11 of them are from Simultala Residential School, which has emerged as one of the best schools in Bihar in the past few years. As many as 42 students of the school were in the top 10 in Class 10 results last year.