Vellore does it again: At 82.29 per cent, it ranks last in pass percentage

At 82.29 per cent, the district ranked last as compared to Tiruvannamalai which secured 93.62 per cent. Education officials looked morose following this ‘disaster’ and have now begun to look for the reasons for the debacle.

Of the 18,052 boys and 21,831 girls who appeared for their Class 11 exams, 86.13 per cent boys and 91.90 per cent girls cleared it. Officials, not wanting to be named, said, “The poor performance among boys pulled down the aggregate result.”

“The only subjects in which the district recorded a 100 per cent pass percentage was in Microbiology, Communicative English, Business Mathematics and statistics and Advanced Tamil,” officials said.

“Among different government schools (AD welfare, forest, fully aided, government, municipality, oriental, partly aided, self-finance matriculation and self-finance under director of school education) AD welfare schools fared the poorest with a tally of 76.73 per cent. All 66 students in oriental schools managed to clear the exams, but in all categories girls performed better than boys,” said Vellore CEO S Mars. He added that headmasters of schools which performed poorly in different subjects would be asked for an explanation.

Among the Arts, Science, Commerce and vocational streams, Art students fared the best by raking up a pass percentage of 95.80. They were followed by Commerce students with 93.51per cent, while other streams scored less than 90 per cent, added officials.

SN Janardhanan, a JACTO-GEO high level committee member, said, “Girls’ schools and co-educational schools always perform better than boys’ schools.”