Girls outshine boys again in Punjab board middle exams

Maninder Kaur of Public School, Banga, and Shivani Thakur of Sarvhitkari Vidya Mandir, Talwara, in Hoshiarpur, have jointly bagged the second position by securing 579 marks.The pass percentages of regular and private candidates this year are 82.02 per cent and 75.56 per cent respectively as against 80.01 per cent and 72.89 per cent last year.

The total number of Result Late cases are 2,570, out of which 1,907 are regular candidates whose results have been withheld due to the delay on the part of school authorities in sending the internal assessment marks. An analysis of the merit list, which has the names of students who have secured 542 marks and above reveals that performance of students studying in private schools is far better than those studying in the government schools. There is not even a single student from the government schools in rural areas and colonies in the merit list. The district-wise analysis shows that both regular and private candidates from Patiala, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Jalandhar have fared better in terms of pass percentages. While candidates from Fatehgarh Sahib, Gurdaspur, Muktsar and Nawanshahr have not fared that well. There are a total of 64 Unfair Means (UMC) cases, with boys outnumbering girls. Hoshiarpur tops the list with 21 cases, of which 13 are boys. Fatehgarh Sahib has 9 UMC cases. An official ofthe Middle cell maintains that flying squads appointed by the board generally keeps a stricter vigil in the places closer to Chandigarh, such as the centres in Ropar, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ludhiana and hence the number of UMC cases are more in these areas. Despite shortage of staff in the middle cell, they have been able to declare the results in record time and without any errors.