Bengaluru, The Karnataka Education Department on Thursday announced the much-awaited, crucial SSLC (Class 10) results, which saw 85.63 per cent students pass, while girl students outpaced boys.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister B.C. Nagesh also announced that rural students have performed better than those who are studying in cities.

While the pass percentage of students from urban areas was 86.64 per cent, it was 91.32 per cent for students from rural areas. The boys have recorded 86.34 per cent pass percentage whereas the girls have achieved 92.44 per cent.

The students belonging to Scheduled Caste showed 86.80 per cent success rate, while it was 88.96 per cent for students belonging to Scheduled Tribes.

A total of 145 students have secured first rank by scoring full 625 marks out of 625.

Among the 8,73,859 students had enrolled for exams, 8,53,436 appeared in it. The pass percentage was 99.99 per cent in 2020-21 and 72.42 per cent in 2019-20. Out of 4,667 differently abled children who attended the exams, 3,762 have passed.

The supplementary exams will be held in June.

Conducting of the SSLC exams were considered as the litmus test for the ruling BJP. Majority of students had attended exams amid the hijab crisis and drama. Muslim students, barring few, shunned the hijab to take up the crucial examinations.

This was the first time after the Covid pandemic that the exams were conducted in the normal pattern. Section 144 was clamped in and around 3,444 examination centres across the state and tight police security cover provided to avoid any showdown or untoward incidents.

As many as 60,000 government officers were put into the exercise of monitoring the examinations.