District students steal march over their city counterparts

Kolkata: Students from the districts continued to dominate the merit list of the Higher Secondary Examinations, the results of which were declared on Friday. 71 out of the 80 students whose names figured in this list are from the districts. Another striking feature of this year's results has been the success of the minority students.

As per statistics of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, 80 percent of the minority students have passed the examination this year.

"We have taken it up as a challenge to rope in more and more first generation learners in higher secondary level which is the gateway to higher education. We are happy that we are reaching out to more and more of these learners. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Kanyashree project and merit-based scholarships by the state government has helped us to penetrate deep into the districts," said Mohua Das, the Council president, and added that as many as 300 Higher Secondary schools in the districts have been upgraded. According to Das, the dropout rate has also come down from 2.4 percent to 1 percent this year.

Granthan Sengupta of Jalpaiguri Zilla School has come first with 99.2 percent marks. The second position has been bagged by Ritwik Kumar Sahoo (493) of Tamluk Hamilton High School with 98.6 percent.

Ritwik had earlier topped from Bengal in NEET with an all-India rank of 13. The third position went to two students while the fourth place has been bagged by six students including Joydeep Bhowmick of Manindra Nath High School in Cooch Behar.

Among the OBC-A category, Sariful Islam of Pandua Sasi Bhusan Saha High School in Hooghly came fifth with 97.2 percent marks.

East Midnapore which has clinched the top spot in the Madhyamik examination in terms of successful candidates came up with the highest success rate of 91.98 percent. Despite ranking sixth in terms of success rate, Hooghly secured the highest share of 13 merit list holders.

The newly created district of Kalimpong followed next with 91.69 percent of students passing the examination.

Kolkata ranked fifth registering a pass percentage of 87.68 which is slightly higher than last year's 87.37. Nine students from the city made it to the merit list.

The overall success rate in Higher Secondary examination dipped slightly from 84.20 to 83.75 percent this year. In terms of success rate, boys performed better than girls with the pass percentage slightly increasing from 85.15 to 85.22 percent this year. A total of 21 girls have featured in the top-10 merit list.

The success rate for girls slightly decreased from 83.26 to 82.46 percent this year. However, girls have remained almost at par with boys in securing 'O' Grade (90-100) with 2,655 boys and 2,593 girls scoring it.

A total of 8,04,895 candidates appeared for the exams that were held between March 27 and April 11. The total number of successful candidates have been 6,63,516.

The exams registered participation of 53 percent girls which is six percent higher than last year.