The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), a division under the Ministry of Education, has revealed a concerning statistic: more than 29 lakh students failed their Class 10 board exams in 2023.
In the Class 10 examination, a total of 1,89,90,809 students participated. Out of this cohort, 1,60,34,671 students successfully cleared the exams, while a staggering 29,56,138 students did not qualify for Class 11.
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan shared this data during a session in the Lok Sabha on Monday, shedding light on a worrying trend of increasing numbers of students failing the Class 10 board exams over the past four years.
From 2019 to 2022, the figures depict a troubling pattern: 1,09,800 failures in 2019, 1,00,812 in 2020, a slight decrease to 31,196 in 2021, followed by a significant spike to 1,17,308 in 2022.
This disconcerting trend is not limited to a specific educational board. Various boards, including the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), Assam Board of Secondary Education, Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Education, Gujarat Secondary & Higher Secondary Education Board, Board of School Education Haryana (HSEB), Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education, Board of Secondary Education Madhya Pradesh, Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad Uttar Pradesh, and others, reported a substantial increase in the number of Class 10 students failing in the past year.
While Education Minister Pradhan did not explicitly mention it, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education cannot be discounted as a potential contributing factor. The pandemic exacerbated existing educational disparities, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Its ever-evolving nature intensified socio-economic barriers for the underprivileged, potentially playing a role in the growing number of Class 10 students facing academic setbacks.
The increasing failure rates in Class 10 board exams highlight the urgency for educational stakeholders to address the systemic issues leading to these outcomes, ensuring inclusive and effective measures to support students, especially those facing socio-economic challenges and disruptions caused by the pandemic.