Saturday, 09 May 2009: About 43 per cent of students, who appeared for the second year Pre-University Course examination in March, have passed. This is an improvement of about two per cent compared to the results of 2008. Not surprisingly, considering the records of previous years, girls continue to outdo boys with an overall pass percentage of 50.19, compared to their male counterparts whose overall pass percentage is 37.56.

Of the 6,06,321 students who had appeared for the examination, 2,62,802 have passed. The results were announced here on Saturday by the Department of Pre-University Education and were posted on websites and made available through SMS, IVRS, WAP and Nemmadi centres across the State. The marks obtained by toppers in Arts, Commerce and Science are 564 (94 per cent), 591 (98.5 per cent) and 589 (98.17 per cent) out of 600, respectively. While the results were available on the Net from Saturday afternoon, they would be displayed in the respective colleges on Sunday, said Commissioner of Department of Pre University Education S.G. Hegde.

Announcing the results, Mr. Hegde claimed that steps taken by the department had resulted in higher pass percentage. Students in Commerce stream performed well by registering a pass percentage of 55.58, followed by Science (46.17 per cent) and Arts (36.29 per cent), he said.

Mr. Hegde said the multiple-choice question papers in SSLC could have been one of the reasons for lower pass percentage in the Arts stream as students were expected to write essay-type answers in the second year pre-university examination. While students from rural areas fared well in the SSLC examination, their counterparts from urban areas excelled in the PU examination with a pass percentage of 47.77 as against 42.23 registered by rural students. Despite the highest number of students (3,18,478) writing the examination in Kannada medium, their pass percentage was lower (37) compared with their counterparts from English medium (2,87,843 and 50.33). As many as 10,847 students secured distinction by scoring 85 per cent marks and above, while 1,09,860 secured first class, 70,467 second class and 71,628 pass.

Thus, the majority of students (41.8 per cent) passed with first class. Many students scored 100 in different subjects. As many as 594 students scored 100 marks in mathematics, followed by in physics (380), chemistry (323), computer science (144), accountancy (141), business studies (126), basic mathematics (87), statistics (81), followed by other subjects. Dakshina Kannada and Udupi continue to occupy the first and second places (80.92 and 80.62 per cent, respectively), while Raichur, which was in 29th position, took the last (30th) position with a pass percentage of 28.05 this year.