Best-Five will not affect percentages, say students

Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) students will not be able to count their group 3 subject in their Best- Five percentage while applying to junior colleges, but this does not seem to have made a dramatic difference to their percentages. Bhavya Dore reports.

Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) students will not be able to count their group 3 subject in their Best- Five percentage while applying to junior colleges, but this does not seem to have made a dramatic difference to their percentages.

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The ICSE results were announced on Tuesday. Students appeared for the Class 10 board exams in seven subjects. However, as per the Supreme Court’s interim order last year, they will not be able to count the vocational subject in the Best-Five percentage.

“We have calculated our students’ percentages in a variety of combinations and they seem to be getting roughly the same percentage each time,” said Sonu Arora, vice-principal of Gundecha Education Academy in Kandivli. “There is a difference of 1% to 2% at most, luckily our students have performed consistently in different subjects.”

For Nirali Mehta, one of the highest scorers in the city, counting the group 3 subject brought her percentage up from 98.2% to 98.4%.

“It wasn’t a shock to us because the system has been there from last year,” said Mehta. “For me, the difference doesn’t matter but for some others it might, because the Group 3 subjects are usually scoring.”

“It’s just a variation of a few percentage points, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference,” said Riya Mehta, a student of Walsingham School whose percentage falls from 97.4% to 96.8% without the group 3 subject. “People are not really affected because the system has been there since last year.”

For others, such as Shruti Agrawal, the difference was 1% point, but not enough to make her complain. “I’m not worried, the group 3 subject score was not that much more,” she said.