There has been a huge increase in the number of centums scored by students in the second pre-university (II PU) examination. This year, 20,958 centums have been bagged by students in different subjects, said Primary and Secondary Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar on Tuesday.
This is a 74.5% increase from the previous year. Last year, students had secured 12,008 centums in different papers.
The highest number of centums — 7,131 — have been secured in mathematics. Last year too, the most number of full marks — 2,477 — were bagged in mathematics. This year, the percentage increase in centums in the paper is 187.8.
The second-most number of perfect scores — 2,305 — is in accountancy.
Officials in the Department of Pre-university Education said the increase in centums could be attributed to the pattern of the question papers. “Over the last few years, evaluators have been sticking to textbooks and many questions were from picked from the questions at the end of the chapters. This is because they don’t want to be pulled up and told that they are asking questions out of the syllabus,” an official said.
Another reason for the high number of centums in science subjects, an official pointed out, is that teachers are now well-versed with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus, which was first introduced for II PU students in 2012.
The lowest number of perfect scores have been bagged in the subjects ‘Beauty and Wellness’ and ‘Urdu’, with only one student managing to do so in each subject.
The percentage of distinctions too has increased this year. Out of the 4.17 lakh students who cleared the exam, 16.5% have secured distinction. Last year, the percentage was 13.22.
