No Gujarat student in National merit list

Girls from the state have come out as champions in Indian School Certificate (ISC-Class XII) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE-Class X) examination. The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) on Tuesday after declared the results for Class 10 and 12 with ICSE recording a pass percentage of 99.12%, 96.16% students cleared the ISC exam across the state.

While no student from Gujarat made to it the national merit as declared by the Council, four students including one from Rajkot and three from Ahmedabad made it to the state merit for class 10 whereas three from class 12 including one from Vadodara and two from city made it to state merit list.

Girls did better than boys with 99.36% girls passing class 10 as against 98.97% boys and 97.42% girls passing class 12 as against 95.39% boys. Across the country, Western region recorded highest pass percentage for class 10 whereas for class 12, Southern region recorded highest pass percentage.

Toppers speak:

Gaurvi Narang, Humanities, 98.5%:

At a time when students detach themselves from internet and television to focus on boards, Gaurvi used them as her stress-buster. Wanting to be under pressure at home and understanding the plight of working parents, Gaurvi moved to her grandparents house two months before the exams. "I would watch TV and shows on internet with my grandparents to take break from studies. What also worked for me was that I never left a chapter even after studying. I would go back and revise to learn something new from it." Gaurvi now plans to study media and communication.

Vishwa Saglani, 97.8%:

Sports and music helped Vishwa to bust stress. "Whenever I used to take a break from studies, I would play badminton or go for cycling or listen to music. I was expecting 95% and above but this came to me as a surprise. I am preparing for entrance exams at design institutes."

IPS officer writes to CBSE chairman over internal assessment issue:

Gujarat cadre IPS Vipul Aggarwal in his letter to Anita Karwal, Chairman, CBSE said, "The grades given by school are much less as compared to what my daughter scored in boards. I do not wish to contest on the grades given by the school but my objective is the freedom given by CBSE to schools to assign grades in arbitrary manner. I have learnt that there are schools that uniformly give high grades, similarly there are cases of favourism and bias at levels of schools leading to undue advantage to few."

Suggesting the board, he said, "Either the internal assessment should be cancelled, or the board should set clear objective methodology and do an independent audit. The schools should be mandated to upload soft copies of student answer script and scoresheet for all periodicals as well as the system of internal assessment so that there is transparency in the process."