With 465 students sharing the first three official ranks, Tamil Nadu had a record number of State rankers in the SSLC Class X examinations, whose results were declared on Friday. Not only have the number of official State ranks more than doubled compared with 2013, three students scored a perfect 500/500 in the SSLC examinations, in which 10,20,749 candidates appeared.
According to K. Devarajan, Director of Government Examinations, there are 19 official first rankers, 125 second rankers and 321 third rankers this year. Of these, 18 students are girls, and significantly, one of them is Bahira Banu T.N. of the Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Pattamadai, Tirunelveli district, according to the Directorate of Government Examinations.
The 10.2 lakh school students who appeared for the examination secured a pass percentage of 90.7. While there has been a marginal increase from last year’s 89 per cent, the number of candidates decreased from last year’s 10,51,062. With a pass percentage of 93.6, girls outshone boys, who secured 88 per cent.
The State first ranks were cornered by students from Dharmapuri, Tirunelveli, Krishnagiri, Kallakurichi, Pattukkottai, Melur, Tuticorin, Aruppukottai, Virudhunagar, Tenkasi and Tiruppur educational districts, according to a release.
Three students — Hema Varsini G. of Velammal Matriculation, Chennai, Durga Devi G., TVS Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Madurai, and Vijayamoorthy S.V. of GRG Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore — who did not take Tamil as the first language scored 100 per cent, according to the Directorate of Government Examinations. However, the number of students securing an aggregate of more than 60 per cent fell from 7,14,522 in 2013 to 7,10,010 this year.
This is the third batch appearing for the examinations following the introduction of Samacheer Kalvi, a common syllabus for government, State board, matriculation and Anglo-Indian schools.