– Mita Mukherjee

The pass percentage for this year’s ICSE (Class X) and ISC (Class XII) exams stands above 99 percent reflecting high success rate in both the exams – a trend that has continued for the past several years.

This year, the all India and worldwide pass percentage in ICSE is 99.18 percent which is marginally higher than last year’s 99.09 percent. In ISC, the success rate this year is 99.13 percent, slightly higher than last year’s 99.02 percent. The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) declared the results at 11 am on Thursday. Students could access the results online through the council website from 11 am.

After announcing the results, Joseph Emmanuel, CISCE chief executive and secretary said students performed well across the country which reflects consistent hard work of students and schools.

“The results are very good. Students had been consistently performing well. This year’s results are almost the same as last year’s results… slightly better than last year,” Emmanuel told EducationWorld.

A quick analysis of the results by several schools showed an increase in ISC marks. As for ICSE most schools said students scored “according to their expectation.”

“The average score of ISC students at the Julien Day group of schools is quite high this year. In some cases the increase fluctuated between 10 and 20 percent. The trend is encouraging. In ICSE the overall performance is good, but the growth is not so remarkable as in ICSE. This could be, the students at the Class X level are still getting adjusted to the newly introduced competency-based questions ,” Terence John, director the Julien Day group of schools in Kolkata told Education World.

According to John and many other heads, the performance of students has improved in accountancy in ISC.

CISCE head Emmanuel said the council was expecting a better performance in the subject this year because the ISC commerce syllabus has been revamped.

“We are expecting an improvement in students’ performance in accountancy. There was a complaint that the ISC accountancy syllabus is very tough. We have revised it and made it more relevant and aligned to plus two standards,” Emmanual told EducationWorld.

Rodney Borneo, principal of St Augustine’s Day School, Shyamnagar in North 24 Parganas in West Bengal too said that in ISC the results are “satisfactory” and in ICSE students scored exactly what was expected.

“The marks are very well-deserved. In ICSE, suppose we expected that a student would score 88 percent. The result showed that a particular student has scored exactly the same marks,” Borneo told EducationWorld.

At Rammohan Mission High School in Kolkata, performance of students is very high in both ICSE and ISC and according to Sujoy Biswas, the principal of the school, this reflected how well the students were gradually getting adjusted to the new competency-based question pattern.

“When the competency-based questions were introduced we were all apprehensive about the new type of questions. Our students in both ICSE and ISC have performed well. In my opinion, this is a good sign and shows the positive impact of the competency-based questions,” Biswas told EducationWorld.

In the 2026 exams 35 to 40 percent questions in ICSE were competency-based whereas in ISC 35 to 60 percent questions were of the same pattern.

The results showed a similar trend in many other states. Shamael Ahmed, president of Private Schools and Children Welfare Association, an organisation of private schools said there are 15 ICSE/ISC schools in Patna and all of them have performed well like the previous years.

A total of 258, 721 candidates appeared for ICSE examinations from 2957 schools. Among them 137,503 were boys and 121,218 were girls. In ISC 103,316 appeared and among them 54,118 were boys and 49,198 were girls.

In ICSE the Western region recorded the highest pass percentage at 99.85 percent followed by the Southern region at 99.81 percent. But the Southern region recorded the highest success rate in ISC with a pass percentage of 99.87 percent and was followed by the Western region at 99.55 percent.

Also read: CISCE declares ICSE and ISC results 2026; pass rates remain above 99%