Panaji: The Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education saw a pass percentage of 90.6% at the Class XII board exam results declared on Thursday. Of the 17,686 students who appeared for the exam, 16,030 cleared it. The pass percentage was over 5 percentage points more than that recorded in 2024.
Last year, 85% of students had cleared the state board’s Class XII exam.
Goa board chairperson Bhagirath Shetye said the decision to implement a rationalised syllabus — as recommended by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — had paid off.
“In physics, chemistry, biology, and almost all subjects other than languages, one or two topics were dropped as per the rationalised syllabus. This led to lesser stress on students,” said Shetye.
A pass percentage of 92.4% was seen among the girls (9,224 appeared) and 88.7% among the boys (8,462 appeared). Not only was the number of students clearing the Class XII exams higher, performance was also better. The biggest chunk of 7,725 students scored between 60 and 80%.
Another 1,791 students also scored over 81%.
Those who cleared the exams also included 166 children with special needs from four special schools, and another 38 from regular schools that are inclusive, Shetye said.
Among the streams, commerce students had the highest pass percentage of 93.3%, followed by the science stream (91.3%) and the arts stream (91%). The vocational stream saw the lowest pass percentage of 82.7%.
Shetye said the rural taluka of Sanguem recorded the highest pass percentage among all talukas at 95.9%, while Sattari saw the lowest passing percentage of 81.2%. Salcete, though, recorded a good pass percentage of 91.6% despite the highest number of 3,837 students appearing from it.
The subjects which saw the highest number of students scoring full marks were history (42), political science (33), sociology (18), psychology (12), accountancy (10), and Marathi (10).
The schedule of the Class XII exam was advanced from 2025 to allow students enough time to prepare for national tests like JEE and NEET. The exams were held from Feb 10 to March 1 across 20 exam centres.
At the exams, 37 passed Class XII as private candidates and another 37 ITI students cleared the test for the equivalency certificate. Under the ITI scheme, students with a Class X certificate and a minimum of two years’ ITI course in any trade have to clear two languages exams at the Class XII level to be eligible for the Class XII equivalency certification.