Economics, mathematics papers were the toughest

Analysis by CISCE shows least passes were in these two subjects

Students jubilant after the results of ICSE class 10 exams were announced in Bengaluru on Monday.

Economics and mathematics appear to have been the toughest papers for both the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) and the Indian School Certificate (ISC) students.

An analysis by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) of the major subjects showed that the least passes were in these two subjects.

Sources in the council said this was the trend they have observed over the years. In ICSE, the pass percentage in mathematics was 95.63 and economics 94.09. In ISC, 90.15% students passed in economics and 90.67% in mathematics.

Nooraine Fazal, managing trustee, Inventure Academy, said this could be because of the way in which mathematics and economics are taught. “For these subjects, students rely heavily on recall. Besides, some students have fear of mathematics, which is often passed on from their parents. Teachers need to play a vital role in helping students break away from this,” she said.

Maximum passes

In contrast, maximum passes appeared to be in language and computer science subjects in both ICSE and ISC papers. In the ICSE papers, the maximum passes are in Hindi (99.93%), Kannada (99.99%), Bengali (99.8%), and English (99.82%). Computer applications too has 99.99% passes in the class 10 examinations. Maximum passes in the ISC exams are in English (99.5%), Bengali (99.84%) and Hindi (99.51%). Computer science applications has bagged 99.64% passes.

Explaining the possible reason for good performance in the language paper, Jerry George Mathew, principal, Clarence High School, said: “Most ICSE schools give a lot of importance to English. As far as other languages are concerned, the papers were perhaps easy.” He said he was “pleasantly surprised” with the good performance in the Hindi paper in his school.