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Flying high, nineties their playground

Manash Pratim Gohain & Neha Pushkarna | TNN

New Delhi: Ninety is the new 80. Or so it would seem by the abundance of 90 and 95 percenters in CBSE class XII examinations.

There has been a 92% increase in students with 90% and above and a mindblowing 164% increase in students with 95% or above. While Chennai leads the list of 90 percenters with 4,644 students, Delhi ranks second in the league of high scorers with a tally of 3,347

students, which includes 100 students from Delhi government schools. Of the 916 differently abled students who cleared the exams, 11 scored 90% or above.

At DPS RK Puram, out of 946 students who appeared for the exams, 35% got over 90%. “We have beaten our own record,’’ said principal Shyama Chona. Vinay Kumar, principal, DPS Vasant Kunj, said: ‘‘The papers are getting scientific and the questions are more or less from the NCERT text books, so students also focus more. On rare occasions if there is a challenging question, due to public outcry the marking for that question is usually lenient.’’ Of the 456 students who appeared from his school, 100 have scored above 90% and seven above 95%.

But Rashi Bhartia of Amity International, Noida who scored 96.5% doesn’t agree that it is all about the system easing up. ‘‘I took commerce and it was not easy. It is not just about easy question papers, students are also studying more these days. Teachers make extra effort,’’ she says.

At Springdales, Pusa Road, of the 180 students who had taken the exams this year 35 scored between 90% and 100%. Tanvi Dua, who topped in humanities with 95.4% said that attaining 90% becomes imperative considering the competition in higher studies. She says, ‘‘There is always a fight to find a place in a desired college. It’s also because of peer influence that the 90% barrier becomes psychologically so important. I will now go for psychology in Lady Shri Ram College.’’

Amity International School Noida and Saket together sent 521 students for the boards of which 110 scored 90% and above. According to Aanshu Mishra of Amity International Noida, who scored 97.75% from the science stream, the good show this year has been primarily because of the the easy question papers and the hard work of the students.