New Delhi: Nearly 30,000 students have scored 90 percent or above in Class 10 examinations, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said on Thursday.

"The number of students scoring 90 percent and above has gone up to 29,936 this year as against 28,187 last year. This speaks volumes of our students' performance," CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly said.

However, he said, there is a decline in the number of students who have scored 95 percent or above. This year 2,589 students across India have scored 95 percent or above in the examinations as against 2,923 candidates in 2007.

He said the board has given merit certificates to 11,249 students across the country. Merit certificates are awarded subject wise and to the top 0.1 percent of the total students.

Over 765,000 students appeared for the Class 10 examination in India and abroad, and 87.08 percent cleared it. The pass percentage has increased by 2.64 percent from last year.

Interestingly, the new question pattern of CBSE known as High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) has not gone down well with many students. The number of students scoring a full 100 in subjects has come down to 5,071 this year from 7,631 in 2007 in the examinations.

HOTS was the new basis of the question papers in the Class 10 exams this year. It is an analytical problem solving process, geared to assess the students' absorption of knowledge and its application.

"The average performance and pass percentage has increased across the board but the number of perfect scorers has gone down. The new question pattern to judge students' knowledge base could be the reason," said Ganguly.

There is a substantial decline in the number of candidates who have bagged the 'perfect score' in Mathematics. "As against 5,251 students last year, this year just 2,647 students have scored 100 out of 100 in Mathematics."

Similarly, in Social Science, only 598 students have scored a full 100 as against 1,233 last year.

Ganguly said: "We are not going to bring any change in the question pattern. HOTS is a good formula to judge the holistic knowledge of students."

"Once the teachers make the classroom more inclusive and bring in thinking skills, students will do much better," he said.

He, however, added that there are several subjects in which more students have scored the 'perfect 100' than the previous year. Science and Technology, Sanskrit and introductory IT are some of the papers in which more students have scored full marks.

CBSE has stopped declaring the name of toppers in Class 10 examinations for the last two years.

Of the six regions in India, Chennai topped with the highest pass percentage of 95.26, followed by Ajmer (94.22 percent), Allahabad (89.1 percent), Panchkula (89.07 percent), and Delhi (82.87 percent). Guwahati was at the bottom with a pass percentage of 57.29 percent.

School wise, the autonomous Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) with a pass percentage of 97.54 percent have fared better than other schools. The central schools have registered a pass percentage of 96.07 and the independent private schools have a pass percentage of 91.77 percent.

"The consistent effort of our teachers and regular review of students performance led to our success. Our schools are co-ed and residential schools. This helps us to keep a tab on every student and their performance," P.K. Sharma, the assistant commissioner of Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti that runs JNVs, told IANS.

Likewise, over 97 percent of students from Gulf countries have passed the CBSE Class 10 examinations - faring much better than their Indian counterparts. A whopping 97.13 percentage of students in Gulf have passed this year as against 96.68 percent last year. IANS