Goa: Science trips, commerce lifts Class XII pass percentage

PANAJI: The 2020 Class XII exam was cleared by 89.3% students of the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, a pass percentage that was only marginally lower than 2019’s 89.6%. Board statistics show that the slight dip in the pass percentage was due to a minor drop in performance in the science stream by students.

At 92.8%, the highest number of students from the commerce stream cleared the Class XII exam, followed by 88.9% in the science stream, 88.9% in the vocational stream and 85.3% in the arts stream.

Some of the subjects in which students’ pass percentage dipped marginally, having an effect on the overall pass percentage, were physics, chemistry, biology, economics, besides in three second languages — Konkani, Marathi and Hindi. Students did better than last year in English, computer science and French.
Board chairman Ramkrishna Samant said that the nearly 90% students clearing the Class XII exams over the last two years was because of increased competitiveness among students, the board considering students’ internal marks in recent years and due to greater efforts put in by the schools.
From the students that appeared for the Class XII exams across streams, a majority of nearly 40% got a first class, scoring between 60-74%. The percentage of students that scraped through the exam by scoring between 33% to 44% dropped to the lowest in the last three years to just 7.9% in 2020.
Of the 17,183 new students registered for the Class XII exams, 15,339 have qualified for admissions to higher studies. As usual, the pass percentage at 90.9% was higher among girl students, as against 87.4% in boys.
While students at the Cujira centre recorded the highest pass percentage, those in Ponda centre saw the least students clearing the exam among all centres. Dr KB Hedgewar Higher Secondary School became the only aided institution to record a 100% result across different streams. Altogether, 129 students appeared from the school and all cleared the exam.
Mushtifund Aryaan Higher Secondary School and Dempo Higher Secondary School also saw all its students clear the Class XII exam. The other two institutes with 100% result were the special schools — Lokvishwas Prathisthan Higher Secondary School, Ponda and St Xavier’s Academy, Old Goa.
This year, sports merit marks contributed less than 1% to the overall pass percentage with only 147 of the 3,098 who applied for the concession having cleared Class XII exam with the help of these marks.
On the other hand, the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) scheme saw 720 students pass with the help of the scheme. Under NSQF, offered in 35 higher secondary schools, students can opt for a vocational subject as an additional subject, and a student clears the Class XII exam if he or she clears any six of the seven subjects, including the NSQF one.
“I am grateful to the chief minister, the chief secretary, the director of education, DGP, SPs for the North and South Goa and the directorate of health services for making conduct of the exams possible. As you know, some even went to court as three papers of Class XII exam were postponed due to the pandemic and the advocate general made it possible to get nod for conduct the Class XII rescheduled papers as well as the Class X exam,” said Samant.
He said the governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra were cooperative in allowing around 50 students to answer the Class XII exam at centres in their states at border areas shared with Goa.