65 lakh students failed in Class 10, 12 board exams in 2023: Report

Bengaluru:More than 65 lakh students failed to pass their Class 10 and 12 board examinations last year (2023), with state boards showing a higher failure rate compared to national boards, reports said.

The report by PTI quoting sourcing from the Ministry of Education (MoE) said around 33.5 lakh Class 10 students did not advance to the next grade, with 5.5 lakh candidates absent and 28 lakh failing the examinations. Similarly, approximately 32.4 lakh Class 12 students did not complete the grade. Out of these, 5.2 lakh did not appear for the exams, while 27.2 lakh failed.

According to the report, the student failure rate for national boards was higher than national boards in both Class 10 & 12 examination.

In Class 10, the student failure rate for national boards was six percent, whereas, for state boards, it was significantly higher at 16 percent. Similarly, in Class 12, the failure rate for national boards stood at 12 percent, while for state boards, it was 18 percent.

The report also indicated that open school performance was poor in both Class 10 and Class 12.

While the highest number of student failures in Class 10 was seen in the Madhya Pradesh board, followed by Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; in Class 12, Uttar Pradesh reported the highest student failure, followed by Madhya Pradesh.

The report said overall performance of students in 2023 declined in comparison with the previous year. This could be due to a larger syllabus for examination, it said quoting sources.

More girls than boys appeared for Class 10 and 12 board exams from government schools, the report said. Despite this, girls outperformed boys across all management categories.

In Class 12, 87.5 percent of girls in private schools passed the exam compared to 75.6 percent of boys. This results in over nine lakh boys failing the exam compared to four lakh girls in 2023.