Over 65 Lakh Students Did Not Clear Class 10, 12 In 2023, Know why

6.5 MILLION STUDENTS FAILED THEIR CLASS 10 AND 12 IN 2023

Over 6.5 million students did not pass their class 10 and 12 board exams last year, with failure rates being higher in state boards compared to national boards, according to sources from the Ministry of Education (MoE). An analysis of the results from 59 school boards, including 56 state boards and three national boards, showed that more girls took the class 12 exams in government schools, while the opposite was true for private and government-aided schools.

Despite this, girls outperformed boys by a significant margin across all types of school management. The overall pass percentage for girls was more than six percentage points higher than that for boys. "Approximately 3.35 million class 10 students did not advance to the next grade. While 550,000 students did not appear for the exams, 2.8 million failed. This contributes to the low retention rate and Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at the higher secondary level," a source stated.

Similarly, around 3.24 million class 12 students did not complete the grade. Of these, 520,000 did not appear for the exams, while 2.72 million failed. In class 10, the failure rate for students in national boards was 6%, whereas state boards had a much higher failure rate of 16%. In class 12, the failure rate was 12% for national boards and 18% for state boards. The analysis also revealed that students in open schools performed poorly in both classes.

The highest number of student failures in class 10 was reported in the Madhya Pradesh board, followed by Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In class 12, Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of student failures, followed by Madhya Pradesh.

"Overall student performance in 2023 declined compared to the previous year, which could be due to the larger syllabus for the exams," the source mentioned. More girls than boys appeared for class 10 and 12 board exams in government schools.

 "This might indicate a gender bias in how parents allocate spending on education," the source added.

Nevertheless, girls dominated in pass rates across all school management types—in class 12, 87.5% of girls in private schools passed the exam, compared to 75.6% of boys, resulting in nearly 900,000 boys failing the exam compared to 400,000 girls. A total of 59 examination boards, including three national and 56 state boards, reported their results. The exams covered a wide range of curricula, with some boards using non-NCERT syllabi. Despite the large number of students, the pass percentages reveal a concerning trend.

In class 10, out of approximately 18.5 million students who took the exams, 84.9% passed. However, around 3.35 million students are not progressing to class 11 due to failures or non-appearance, contributing to a lower retention rate.

 In class 12, about 82.5% of the 15.5 million students who appeared passed. The highest pass rate was among students who took the exams in Nepali and Manipuri languages, with 85.3% each. A significant number of students—3.24 million—did not complete their class 12 education, either due to failing or not appearing for the exams. Altogether, over 5.5 million candidates failed to pass the class 10 and 12 boards in 2023.

No significant difference in performance was observed between students taking the exams in different languages for both classes 10 and 12. However, there were clear disparities between regions and types of boards, highlighting the need for standardization.

Noteworthy performances were observed among students taking the exams in regional languages such as Marathi (87.4%), Punjabi (87.4%), and Malayalam (87.4%) in class 10. Medium-wise, apart from Hindi and English, Bengali and Marathi were the mediums with over 1 million students, and their pass percentages were better than those for English and Hindi.

Science remains the most popular stream, with 43% of students, mostly boys, choosing it, followed by arts, which was selected by 39% of students, with a higher proportion of girls. Moreover, the pass percentage for girls was slightly higher than that for boys in science and significantly higher in arts.