SSC success rate dips to 4-year low, but tops 2 pre-Covid years

MUMBAI: Appearing for exams based on complete syllabus for the first time since Covid struck, state board students recorded a 93% success rate in the SSC Class 10 results announced Friday. It's a drop from 96.4% in 2022 when the exams were based on 75% syllabus, but similar to 93.3% recorded in 2020 and higher than 75.5% seen in pre-Covid year of 2019 and 86.4% the year before.
Mumbai, too, witnessed a 4% dip to 92.3% this year compared with 96.1% in 2022, even as 1,000 more students scored 90% and above in the city than last year. As both CBSE and ICSE have seen better results than the state board, the race to secure seats in top-rung colleges, especially for humanities and commerce aspirants, will get tougher.
In an indication of a decline in the performance of students, the number of schools securing 100% results has reduced significantly by almost 45% in the state-to 6,844 from 12,210. A principal said this is the first year in recent years that they have seen students who have not made the cut.
6 students get perfect score, schools with 100% results halve to 989 in city
The number of students scoring a perfect 100% in the SSC exams went up to 151 from 122, due to the additional marks for sports and cultural activities. More than 70% of these top scorers are from Latur, while Mumbai has only six. These were the last Class 10 results of the season, setting things in motion for FYJC admissions in Maharashtra. This year, after almost two decades, the results were announced one week earlier than normal dates. The number of schools securing 100% results has reduced significantly by almost 45% in the state. “The results have been low and it is the pandemic effect,” said the principal of a school in Powai.
In Mumbai, the number has halved to 989 this year in comparison to 1,975 in 2022 (see box). Boys recorded a sharp decline of 5% in their success rate compared with last year. Division wise, Mumbai stood at the sixth position among nine, bettering its previous year’s rank by one. In the state, the 90% club shrank this year by 20%. Latur had the highest percentage of students at 7.5% in this club, followed by Kolhapur 6.8%. Of the 3.2 lakh students who cleared the board exam in Mumbai, 11,785 scored 90% and above. Interestingly, the highest number of students fall in the 45-60% bracket, both in the state and in Mumbai division. The SSC batch of 2023 studied online in Class 8 and most of Class 9. Their syllabus was also truncated to 75% in these two crucial years.
Sharad Gosavi, chairman of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, attributed the decline in pass percentage to the impact of the pandemic on self-study, slow pace of writing, copy-free movement and withdrawal of concessions extended during the pandemic. The chairman said schools have reported that many students were unable to complete the papers in the stipulated time. Gosavi said, “This year, the state board had withdrawn all the concessions that were given to students in 2022 as that batch was recovering from the pandemic. This is reflected in the results of not just the state board but also CBSE, ICSE, and other state board results this year.” The state board decided to conduct the exams based on 100% syllabus while the extra writing time of 30 minutes was also withdrawn. The students, this year, were instead given 10 minutes extra after the official closing time of the paper.
Roxana Parelwalla, principal of Dadar Parsee Youths Assembly High School, said their students’ performance saw an improvement with 25 students scoring over 90%. Meanwhile, Fr Agnel School, Vashi, had a 100% scorer last year; this year’s topper got 98.6%. “But overall both the batches have had similar scores, reflecting the consistency in the way teaching-learning is conducted,” said their high school co-ordinator Suja John.
Veena Donwalkar, principal of Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya in Dharavi, said students have not scored as per expectations in almost all the subjects, including languages. “For this batch of SSC students, 75% of the syllabus should have been retained. In our centre we found students were not able to write their papers well,” she said. As compared to 2022, over 61,000 fewer students have enrolled for the examination this year with 15.77 lakh registrations. To reduce the exam stress, the board had given a day off between two papers for students to prepare for the exams. A total of 393 trained counsellors by the State Council of Education Research and Training were appointed across the state to resolve the queries of students.