– Mita Mukherjee

The pass percentage in West Bengal Higher Secondary (Class XII board) exams 2026, the results of which were declared on Thursday, stands at 91.23 percent, marginally higher than last year’s 90.79 percent, Partha Karmakar, president of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Examination said.

This year the council conducted the first-ever semesterised Higher Secondary Examination.

Though the overall performance of students improved marginally this year, only 1.13 percent of the total candidates scored between 90 and 100 percent marks.

This year out of total 5,35,981 students who have been successful in the exam, only 6,434 candidates were placed in the top A++ Grade ( 90 to100 percent).

The council will find out the reasons why the number of top grade holders were so few this time, Karmakar said.

“We have just published the results. We will examine the results and find out why only a few students were placed in the top grade,” the council president said.

Out of the total 5, 35,981 successful examinees, 3,20,240 were girls compared to 2,51,125 boys, showing the dominance of female candidates, a trend that prevailed since past few years.

Overall pass percentage of girls was 92.47 percent against 89.71 percent of male candidates.

However, altogether 64 students were placed in the top 10 ranks out of whom 56 are boys and only eight are girls.

Like the previous year the Science stream continued to have the highest pass percentage . In science the pass percentage was 99.19 percent followed by commerce 93.67 percent and in arts the success rate was 89.19 percent. However, the highest participation was seen in arts stream.

Adrito Pal, a student of Ramakrishna Mission Residential School, run by the Ramakrishna Mission monks stood first scoring 496 out of 500 marks which is 99.2 percent.

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