A total of 33,700 Class XI students appeared for the State board public examination in Coimbatore district which commenced on Wednesday.

According to data from the Coimbatore Chief Educational Office (CEO), 34,595 students were allotted to take the examination across four educational districts (Coimbatore, Pollachi, Perur and S.S. Kulam), out of which 895 students were absent. A total of 182 private candidates wrote the examination under the new syllabus (21 were absent) and 11 private candidates wrote under the previous syllabus (5 were absent).

With the first examination being the Language paper, students in Coimbatore district appeared for examinations in Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, German, French and Malayalam. Maximum number of students appeared for Tamil (29,709 were present and 874 were absent). Next to Tamil, French language paper saw more students with 3,723 students, out of which 18 were absent, according to the CEO data.

In Tiruppur district, 26,901 students and 56 private candidates registered for the Class XI public examinations from the four educational districts – Tiruppur, Dharapuram, Palladam and Udumalpet. As many as 1,457 students and 14 private candidates were absent for the Language paper on Wednesday, educational officials said.