HS Sem III: Despite 93.72% pass rate, fewer 90%+ scorers

Kolkata: The pass rate in the Higher Secondary (HS) Semester III Examinations 2026 stood at 93.72 per cent—the highest since 2011—but the proportion of students securing higher grades has slightly declined compared with the final Higher Secondary Examination held under the annual system in 2025.

Despite expectations that multiple-choice questions answered on OMR sheets would lead to more students scoring higher marks, only 41.16% (2,49,161 students) secured 60% and above, down from 45.38% in HS 2025. Separately, 22.36% scored between 60% and less than 70%, 13.69% between 70% and less than 80%, 4.64% between 80% and less than 90%, and only 0.48% achieved 90% and above. In the previous examination, 1.7% had scored above 90% (Grade O). West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) president Chiranjib Bhattacharya acknowledged the mixed trend.

“The pass percentage has increased exponentially. Even average scores are good. However, there should have been an increase in the number of higher-scoring students. Why that didn’t happen is subject to detailed analysis,” he said. Bhattacharya added that the question papers were intentionally designed to reflect varying levels of difficulty. “It was a standing instruction that in Semester III, a specific percentage of questions should be complex to differentiate between different levels of merit,” he explained. He noted that this structure might have limited the number of top scorers.

He further said that a few schools performed exceptionally well because their students were trained with a focus on competitive examinations. “Our instruction was to include a certain percentage of challenging questions so that students become familiar with the format of competitive exams.

The reason behind the outstanding results from only two schools — Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Purulia, and Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur—is that their students practise intensively for such exams. Of the 69 students on the merit list, 55 are from these two institutions,” Bhattacharya said.

Among the three streams, science outperformed both commerce and arts in terms of pass percentage, merit list representation, and higher marks. Of the 1,11,627 science students who appeared, 98.80% passed, compared with 94.19% of 37,800 commerce students and 92.54% of 4,96,405 arts students—the largest group.

Of the 69 students on the merit list, 68 were from the science stream, with one from commerce and none from humanities. While science also dominated the highest score brackets, arts led in the broader 60% and above category. Arts recorded 1,38,116 students (22.82%) scoring above 60%, followed by 92,249 science students (15.24%) and 18,796 commerce students (3.11%). However, in the top performance bracket of 90% and above, science led with 2,119 students (0.35%), followed by arts with 603 (0.10%) and commerce with 164 (0.03%).

The pattern continued in other brackets: in the 80–90% range, 14,460 science students (2.39%) scored within this band, compared with 11,887 from arts (1.96%) and 1,768 from commerce (0.29%). For scores between 70% and less than 80%, arts led with 6.85% (41,433 students), while science recorded 5.89% (35,640).

Explaining the consistent performance of science students, Bhattacharya said: “Over the past few years, science students have been performing better because most of them take up the subject out of genuine interest. Although their numbers are smaller, they tend to be more serious. Moreover, they had an advantage as they practised for MCQ-based competitive examinations.”