Maths, English papers drag down CBSE Class 12 scores

The Class 12 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) results saw the state recording a higher pass percentage compared to last year, even as overall performances and number of students joining the 90s club varied across schools

The Class 12 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) results saw the state recording a higher pass percentage compared to last year, even as overall performances and number of students joining the 90s club varied across schools. Many city schools said they could not register 100% results because of mathematics and English, which dragged down scores.

Neel Kapoor, who scored 98.6% in the CBSE Class 12 exams, celebrates his success with his parents and school principal at Apeejay School, Nerul. (Bachchan Kumar)

For the second year in a row, not a single city student made it to the list of the country’s top-four scorers released by the CBSE – a huge let-down after a phenomenal showing in the Indian School Certificate (ISC) exams.

Neel Kapoor from Apeejay School, Nerul was the highest scorer with 98.6%. Surprisingly, Kapoor secured 100 out of 100 marks in mathematics and computer science. The maths paper had driven many students across the country to tears and triggered a debate in parliament.

“I found that preparing for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the last two years helped me in solving the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) questions in the paper,” said Kapoor, who was busy preparing for the JEE Advanced to be held on Sunday.

“We missed the 100% pass percentage by a whisker, as two students failed in maths,” said P Selvaraj, principal, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Colaba.

Average performances in most schools were better than last year. “Close to 34% students scored above 90% in our school, also the performance of the students matched our expectations this year,” said Mallika Subramaniam, principal, Navy Children School, Colaba. “Humanities stream fared better than others.”

Apeejay School, Kharghar recorded a success rate of 82.7%, better than previous years. “We are satisfied with our results, 20% of our students scored above 90%,” said Indu Mathur, principal. Similarly, RN Podar School, Santacruz, which had as many as 478 students taking the exam,was also happy with the result. On the other hand, some schools did not fare as good. “The results have been disappointing. We only had 16 students scoring above 90% this year, we had much more last year,” said Ganesh Parmeshwaran, Balbharti School, Airoli.