The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declared the results of the Class 12 board exams on Friday. This year, tthe number of students scoring over 95% marks was over 80% higher compared to last year. The number of students scoring between 90-95% is down by nearly five percent, according to data released by the board on Friday.

The results announced by the board on Friday showed that the number of candidates scoring above 95% has increased from 38,686 last year to 70,004 this time.

Last year, 1,57,934 students had scored between 90-95% in CBSE Class 12 exams. In 2020-21, that number went down to 1,50,152, a drop of over 5%.

CBSE said a total of 13.69 lakh regular students registered for the class 12 board examinations this year.

The board has announced the results this year on basis of an alternate assessment policy after the exams were completely cancelled in view of the aggressive second wave of COVID-19.

In 2020, the class 10 and class 12 board exams had been partially cancelled after India imposed a nationwide lockdown in March to check the spread of COVID-19. The results were then calculated on the basis of the student’s score in the subjects for which exams had already been conducted.

This year, the CBSE has achieved the highest ever pass percentage of 99.37 with girls outshining boys by a slender margin of 0.54%.

According to the policy decided by a 13-member panel of the board, the theory paper evaluation formula is 30 per cent weightage to Class 10 marks, another 30 per cent to Class 11 marks and 40 per cent weightage to marks obtained in Class 12 unit test, mid-term, pre-board exams.

The board had clarified that since the components, including marks of class 11 and class 12, will be awarded at the school level, they will strictly not be comparable across schools due to the variations in the quality of question papers, the evaluation standard and processes, the mode of conduct of exams, among others.

“Therefore, to ensure standardisation, each school will have to internally moderate the marks to account for the school level variations by using a reliable reference standard,” the board’s policy had said.