Well-wishers offer sweets to a student of Chinmaya Vidyalaya who scored 574, at Rourkela in Sundargarh district. Picture by Uttam Kumar Pal

Cuttack, June 28: The twin cities have been left behind by small towns in the top 10 merit list of the matriculation exam, results of which were announced today amidst a controversy over the midnight posting of names of the top 100 students on a social networking site.

At least seven girl students reportedly committed suicide in different parts of the state purportedly because they felt they had performed poorly. Two girls in Balasore, who had attempted suicide, have been hospitalised. Three of the seven suicides were reported from Jajpur.

Boys have outperformed girls in this year’s results, which showed about a four per cent increase in the pass percentage from last year.

While two schools in Cuttack made it to the top 10 merit list, which featured 20 students, not a single school in Bhubaneswar managed to achieve this feat. Schools in smaller towns such as Oupada, Boudh, Keonjhargarh, Soro and Neelakahthanagar found berths in the top 10.

The top 10 list had students from only six government schools, the remaining 14 were from various non-government schools. Forty-eight students from various non-government schools have been placed in the top 100 merit list. The Saraswati Vidya Mandir group of schools bagged six of the top 10 positions.

The underdeveloped Nuapada district recorded the highest pass percentage with 81.87 per cent while Bhubaneswar and Cuttack registered pass percentages of 78.24 and 78.34 respectively. Gajapati reported the lowest pass percentage at 54.31.

While girls outperformed boys in both CBSE and ICSE results this year, the matric results showed a reverse trend. Only 1.64 lakh girls cleared the exams as compared to 1.70 lakh boys, clearly indicating the indifference of people towards girl child education, especially in rural areas.

A total of 240 schools in the state have recorded 100 per cent results while 139 schools have registered nil results. However, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in the capital, which schools tribal students from different parts of the state, achieved cent per cent results.

A total of 5.11 lakh students appeared for the annual matric exams conducted by the Board of Secondary Education this year. Of the 4.56 lakh regular candidates, 70.8 per cent cleared the examination against 66.75 per cent last year.

A total of 67,235 students passed the examination in first division, 91,190 in second and 1,51,555 students in third division.

Dibyanshu Kar of Oupada High School of Balasore district aced the exams by scoring 588 marks out of 600.

The matriculation exam results were delayed this year as the exam was earlier rescheduled following theft of question papers from a high school in Puri after the first paper, Odia, got over on March 19. A few officials of the school were suspended for dereliction of duty and the state government ordered a probe by the CID wing of the Crime Branch.

The remaining exams for the 4.56 lakh regular candidates were rescheduled and held between April 17 and April 26.

Unlike previous years, the BSE did not publish the result booklets since this would have further delayed the announcement of results by four to five days. The board usually publishes over 4,000 booklets every year, which are supplied to all districts. However, this year the matriculation results were declared online and through SMS only. This decision of not publishing the booklets triggered protests from several quarters.