Students scoring over 90% in Higher Secondary sees a huge jump

KOLKATA: A student from the humanities stream has topped this year’s West Bengal Higher Secondary Examinations, bucking a recent trend of only science students making it to the top.
In many ways, the result of the examination conducted by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education mirrored the other board results with around 60% more students scoring over 90% than last year.



The topper, Granthan Sengupta of Jalpaiguri Zilla School, fell short of the perfect score by a mere 4 marks, quite like the toppers at ISC and CBSE. This is good news for HS students, who now have a level playing field and a fighting chance to compete with their counterparts from rival boards.

Granthan who secured the first rank with a score of 496/500, wishes to pursue History and be a professor. While there hasn’t been a top ranker from the humanities stream in recent memory, this year there are five from humanities in the top six ranks.

80 students, nine from Kolkata, on top 10 list

The results also revealed a sharp rise in students securing high marks. While 5,248 students fetched over 90% against 3,302 last year, the trend was similar in the 80%-89% band (41,428 in 2018 against 35,881 in 2017). In ISC, 3,082 bagged above 90% in Bengal, while in CBSE Bhubaneswar region, 4,346 students scored over 90%.

The high scores also saw 80 students stacked in the top 10 positions in HS, up from 66 students last year. Nine of them are from Kolkata. In ISC, 40 students had shared the top 10 list.

While students with good scores will be able to compete for top colleges and institutions, those who did not score high may get edged out. The principal of a leading city college admitted as much. “It is an encouraging sign that the number of candidates who bagged above 90% is increasing. But those in the range of 70% to 79% score may not find seats in their desired colleges with a preferred choice in honours,” he said.

Unlike Madhyamik where district schools hogged the limelight, city schools continued to hold the turf in HS. Of the 78 examinees from Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission, all except one scored over 80%. Jadavpur Vidyapith too scored big with 13 students securing over 90%, including the city co-topper Abhradipta Ghosh who ranked 5th.

The other student to score the same marks was from the integrated Pathfinder Higher Secondary Public School where Aritra Roy also matched Abhradipta’s score of 486.

Rittwik Kumar Sahoo, the state topper in NEET, bagged the second position in HS.

The CM will felicitate successful candidates of Madhyamik, HS, ICSE, ISC, CBSE and WBJEE at Netaji Indoor Stadium on June 11.