Rise of girl students in Class 12 science stream over the decade

The trend is evident even among the total number of girls who cleared Class 12 — the share of those who studied science in this cohort went up from 31% in 2010 to 40% in 2023. During the same period, the share of girls who cleared Class 12 in the commerce stream went down from 20% to 12% and those in arts streams, went down marginally from 46% to 45%.

The Indian Express analysed data from 25 school boards between 2010 and 2023, and found that of the total students who passed their Class 12 Board exams in the science stream, 45.53% were girls — up from 38.22% in 2010.

The findings are in line with the increasing enrolment of women in sciences in higher education, where, in fact, in many programmes, the gender gap has already closed. As per the 2021-22 All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) released earlier this year, in the science stream, out of the 57.18 lakh students enrolled at the undergraduate, postgraduate, MPhil, and PhD levels, 52.1% are women.

Unlike for science, the gender gap in the commerce and arts streams hasn’t registered a big shift. For instance, in 2023, among all Class 12 students who passed the Board exams in the commerce stream, 47% were girls, up from 44% in 2010. During the same period, the proportion of boys in the commerce stream fell marginally from 56% in 2010 to 53% in 2023.

In the arts stream, where girls have traditionally dominated, their share among all students who cleared Class 12 is now 57%, while boys represent 43%. Thirteen years ago, the picture was nearly identical (56.8% girls, 43% boys).

While nationally, 45% of students who passed with science in Class 12 were girls, there are many states where the gender gap has already closed completely. The state boards of Chhattisgarh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu saw more girls than boys clearing Class 12 in the science stream in 2023.

The state board with the largest share of girls in the science stream in 2023 was Chhattisgarh — 63.25% of those who cleared Class 12 were girls — a big jump from 39.18% in 2010. A significant rise was also seen in the state boards of Madhya Pradesh (from 34.42% in 2010 to 50.89% in 2023) and Nagaland (from 39.04% in 2010 to 46.64% in 2023).

State boards where over 50% of the students who cleared Class 12 in the science stream were girls

While the central boards — CBSE and ICSE — too have been recording a rise in the share of girls clearing Class 12 in the science stream, their numbers are slightly lower than the all-India figure of around 46%. While in CBSE, 42.64% of those who cleared their Class 12 in science subjects in 2023 were girls (up from 37.91% in 2010), in ICSE, their share rose from 39.41% in 2010 to 43.85%.

The Indian Express analysed data from 2010 to 2023 since it was from 2010 that the Education Ministry started collecting state-wise data for Board results. The Indian Express also analysed Class 10 Board exam results and found that more students are now scoring over 60%.

Out of 20 board examinations analysed for both 2023 and 2007, 19 recorded an increase in the percentage of students scoring 60% or more last year.

The only exception was the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, where the percentage of students scoring 60% or more in Class 10 fell from 25.25% in 2007 to 15.29% in 2023.

Out of the 20 examination boards for which data was available in the Education Ministry’s report for 2007, the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education saw the highest rise of around 67 percentage points. This was followed by the Nagaland Board of School Education with an increase of around 53 percentage points, and the Uttar Pradesh State board (Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad) with a rise of around 48 percentage points.