Most schools were satisfied with the ICSE (Class X) and ISC (Class XII) results, which were announced on Sunday, but some said there had been a marginal dip in the average performance in ISC compared with last year.
The decline was mostly attributed to online classes necessitated by the Covid pandemic.
For the ISC examinees, this was their first board exams. In 2021, when they were in Class X, the ICSE exams could not be held because of a sharp rise in Covid cases.
“We are happy with the students’ performance. One cannot ignore the fact that this was their first public exam,” said Seema Sapru, principal, The Heritage School. The heads of many other schools echoed her.
Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), which conducts the two exams, said the average performance in both exams was slightly better compared with 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
“This batch struggled because of the pandemic. They did not have enough writing practice and their teaching was online. They did not have the comfort of 2019. But compared with 2019, there has been a slight improvement. We have to give the students credit for that,” he said.
At The Heritage School, the ISC school average is 86.31 per cent, compared with 87.15 per cent last year.
At Modern High School for Girls, the school average in ISC this year is 91.32 per cent, down from 92.12 per cent last year.
At Don Bosco Park Circus, the school average in ISC has come down from 88.72 per cent last year to 88.46 per cent.
“Despite sincere efforts by teachers, the results show that there was a gap, mainly in Class XI when they attended online classes. In Class XI, there is a certain approach to learning... which we had to rush through in Class XII,” said Damayanti Mukherjee, principal, Modern High School for Girls.
Teachers said the ISC examinees were in Classes IX and X during the pandemic, when classes were held online. Many of them did not attend classes regularly. And general lack of parental control on students of that age hardly helped matters, they said.
Father Bikash Mondal, principal, Don Bosco Park Circus, said parents would complain to them that their children would close the door of their rooms and remain online but truant frequently.
In-person sessions were held when the students were in Class XI, but even then, Mondal said, they were “irregular in school”.
Both Don Bosco Park Circus and St James’ School said their top scorers’ performance fell short of expectations.
In Bengal, 41,506 students appeared in the ICSE exams from 418 schools and 27,442 students in the ISC exans from 312 schools.
The pass percentage in the state is 98.71 in ICSE and 96.88 in ISC.
