The results that were announced a little over two and half months after the exams were cancelled, saw 99.04% of the students achieving success. Overall, 2.07 million students from 21,467 schools passed the exams.

Among 16 CBSE regions, the central board said that Trivandrum region performed the best with a pass percentage of 99.99%, followed by Bengaluru and Chennai regions with a success rate of 99.96% and 99.94%, respectively. Guwahati region performed the worst with a pass percentage of 90.54% while the success rate of Delhi east region stood at 97.8%.

When compared among school categories, the KVs and Central Tibetan schools were at the top with 100% success rate, followed by Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas with a pass percentage of 99.99% and private schools recorded 99.57% pass percentage. Whereas, government and government-aided schools had a success rate of 96.03% and 95.88%, respectively.

All the school groups improved their performance this year against 2020. Government-aided schools showed a maximum improvement as their pass percentage went up by 18% in 2021.

The results this year are being announced after taking into account the performance in internal exams, school practicals and project works as board exams could not be held due to the second wave. The schools played a bigger role in results tabulation and completed the task, following which CBSE worked on the tabulation and moderation process.

On 14 April, after a review meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, class 10 board exams were cancelled. This was done amid an escalating second wave of the covid-19 and constant demand from students and states to cancel the board exams.

The central board on Tuesday said that in 2021 at least 9.58% or 200,962 students scored more than 90% and less than 95%. And at least 57,824 students or 2.76% scored above 95% marks.

The result of 16,639 students is still under process and CBSE said no merit list will be declared this year and no merit certificates will be issued to students. CBSE Examination Controller Sanyam Bharwdaj said, for the first time, CBSE will allow schools to download digital academic documents including mark sheets and certificates via the DigiLocker.

DigiLocker is a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT under the Digital India Corporation (DIC). A student can access the DigiLocker by registering on its platform by giving Aadhaar details, mobile number and email id.

On 14 April, CBSE had said that Class Xth Board will be prepared on the basis of an objective criterion to be developed by the Board. Any candidate who is not satisfied with the marks allocated to him/her on this basis will be given an opportunity to sit in an exam. For the results calculations, schools and CBSE assigned 10% mark to performance in unit tests, 30% to mid-term exams and 40% to pre-board exams. The rest 20% was for performance in practicals.

The improvement exam will be conducted between 16th August and 15 Sept and final dates will be announced soon, said Bhardwaj adding that CBSE will be issuing a combined mark sheet cum certificate this time instead of separate documents.