Class X city students outdo national average with 97.41% score; 90.48% clear Class XII

On the the same day, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) also announced the Class XII results, which saw 90.48 per cent students from Pune region clearing the exam, lower than the country’s average of 92.71 per cent.

Pune region includes Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Though a number of students scored in the 90 per cent plus category, principals of city schools gave mixed reactions as they said that previous years had seen better results. A combination of several factors such as disruption in studies due to the switch between online-offline mode, change in exam pattern, including the board adopting a two-term pattern instead of a single year-end examination, and a belated decision to give unequal weightage to marks of Term I and Term II examination, may have affected the outcome, some of them said.

In its press release issued after the declaration of the Class XII examination results, the CBSE said that while equal weightage was given to both terms for practicals, in the theory section, 30 percentage weightage was given to Term I and 70 percentage to Term II for the calculation of the final results.

C V Madhavi, principal of Aundh DAV School, said that though the CBSE kept its decision confidential, students and principals should welcome it. “The paper pattern during Term I was completely different, usually we have subjective questions which gives scope to students to answer. Also, it was the Covid period, we went through so many changes, so students were on the edge. It’s a good thing what they did since Term II was like the regular paper,” she said.

Of the 210 students who appeared for Class XII from her school, Nishitha Jain from Commerce (98.2%) and Aarush Patel from Science (97%) emerged as school toppers while all 64 of 459 who appeared for Class X scored above 96 per cent. Punit Chaudhari who scored 99.2 per cent marks was school topper.

Sangeeta Kapoor, principal of Orchid School, Pune, which had 100 per cent results, said extraordinary efforts went into Term I, adding the students would expect a 50-50 weightage.

Amita Singh, headmistress and officiating principal of DPS School, said that the pandemic posed formidable challenges and two board exams in a year were “undeniably stressful”. She added, “However, it proved that even amidst adversity, the students could prove their mettle by remaining focused on goals and not the impediments.”

DPS Pune had 274 students appear for Class X of which two — Filza Shah Rasoolji Valiji and Karthik Narayanan Alaguraja – were tied for the school topper position with 99.6 per cent marks while of the 175 students registered for Class XII, Kashish Jaswani was Commerce Topper with 99.4 per cent, Riya Bansal Science topper with 98.8 per cent and Paramyaa Nand Humanities topper with 97.8 per cent score.

For eighth successive year, Amanora School recorded 100 per cent result with all 206 students who had appeared for the exam clearing it. Aditi Shinde with 99.2 per cent score topped the school.

The Orbis School put up a notable performance with Vaishnavi Saksena scoring 99 per cent in Commerce – emerging as one of the highest scorers in the city. Aarav Kanodia from the same school scored 97.4 per cent while Aditi Ranjan, with 95.8 per cent score, emerged as the topper in Humanities. In Class X, Animesh Gokhale with 98.6 per cent was the highest scorer at Keshav Nagar branch while Sanjeet Roy, with 97.4 per cent, topped Mundhwa branch, said director-principal, Gunjan Srivastava.

Across all three campuses, the Sanskriti Group of Schools had good results with more than 55 percent of the batch scoring above 90 per cent and Aaryan Nakul Shah emerging as school topper with 99 per cent score. In Class XII, 40 per cent of the batch scored above 90 percent and Ridam Mishra topped the school with 97.6 per cent. GG International School also had a good year with 100 per cent results in both Class X and XII. Dhairya Apoorva Amin who scored 99.40 per cent topped Class X and Riya Sapra who scored 97.60 topped Class XII.

On the new board exam format, Nirmal Waddan, principal, The Kalyani School, said the formula for calculating final results made her both happy and unhappy. “Both terms had their pros and cons. Term I was completely objective, which is not the usual CBSE pattern. There were good students who lost marks and I think the board made a mistake here because some questions had more than one answer, particularly in English. I saw the question paper and I thought, ‘how will my students answer this?’” she said.

“Also, in subjects like Mathematics, marks are given for steps, even if last answer is not correct, the student will get some marks, which is not the case in objective-type questions. And for Term II, which had subjective questions, our students didn’t get enough practice for writing, they were slow and not confident. That’s another side of the story,” she added.

The Kalyani School had 78 students in Class XII of which 27 had more than 90 per cent score and Bhavya Maggu (97.8 per cent, Humanities), Ayush Nimak (96.2 per cent, Science) and Ananya Bhandari (96 per cent, Commerce) emerged as school toppers. As many as 55 of 78 students in Class X scored above 90 per cent; school topper Shaurya Gupta scored 99.4 per cent.

At the Army Public School Kirkee, Adah Verma who scored 98.6 per cent was the school topper from the Humanities stream, Akansha Negi from Science stream scored 97.2 per cent while Aakansha Yadav was top scorer from Commerce Stream with 98 per cent, said principal Arti Sharma.

VIBGYOR High, Balewadi, had 35 students for Class X of which eight scored above 90 per cent and Prayag Srivastav was school topper with 96.8 percent.

Army Public School, Pune, also had good results with Vedang Bahugana topping Science stream with 98.8 per cent, Sania Kaushik topping Commerce with 98 per cent and Aditi Bedarkar topping Humanities with 97.4 per cent.