Girls have once again outperformed boys in this year’s ICSE Class 10 and ISC Class 12 examinations the results for which were declared Friday.
In all, 98.78 per cent of girls and 97.73 per cent of boys passed the Indian Certificate for Secondary Education (ICSE) exam, while 96.66 per cent of girls and 93.91 per cent of boys passed the Indian School Certificate (ISC) examination.
Anika Aggarwal, Simran Khanuja of St. Mary’s School, Pune, and Manasi Arora of Chatrabhuj Narsee Memorial School, Mumbai were declared the joint Class 10 toppers scoring 98.4 per cent.
Bhuvanya Vijay of St. Joseph’s Academy, Dehra Dun, stood first in Class 12 with a score of 99 per cent, said Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations which conducted the examinations.
This year, 1,40,878 students appeared in the Class 10 exam, while 64,043 candidates appeared in the Class 12 exam.
Giving region-wise analysis break-up of the pass percentage, Mr Arathoon said the southern region posted the best percentage in the country in both Class 10 and Class 12 results.
While the pass percentage of the southern region for Class 10 stood at 99.66 per cent, it was 98.28 per cent for Class 12.
Talking about Delhi and NCR region, Mr Arathoon said Mansi Mishra of Holy Angel’s School, Sahibabad, has topped the Class 10 results scoring 97.6 per cent. Shivali Malhotra and Bhavya Kulashreshtha of Shri Ram School, Aravali, jointly topped in Class 12 scoring 98.75 per cent.
— PTI

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‘Women groups can reduce infant deaths’
TEENA THACKER
, MAY 17

Women’s groups can dramatically reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths in the world’s poorest communities, a new meta-analysis of seven trials, conducted in India, Bangladesh, Malawi and Nepal, published in the Lancet, has disclosed. The Lancet said the interventions were cost-effective by WHO standards and could save an estimated 2,83,000 infants and 41,100 mothers per year if implemented in rural areas.
Experts assessed groups facilitated by local women, who received a short training course of around 7-11 days, but were not health workers, affected rates of maternal and newborn mortality. Meta-analyses of all seven trials (1,19,428 births) showed that exposure to women’s groups was associated with a 37% reduction in maternal mortality, a 23% reduction in neonatal mortality and a 9% non-significant reduction in stillbirths with high heterogeneity for maternal and neonatal results. In the meta-regression analyses, the proportion of pregnant women in groups was also associated with reduction in both maternal and neonatal mortality. A sub-group analysis of the four studies in which at least 30% of pregnant women participated in groups showed a 55% reduction in maternal mortality.
and a 33 per cent reduction in neonatal mortality.
“Maternal and neonatal mortality rates remain high in many low-income and middle-income countries. Different approaches for the improvement of birth outcomes have been used in community-based interventions, with heterogeneous effects on survival. We assessed the effects of women’s groups practising participatory learning and action, compared with usual care, on birth outcomes in low-resource settings,” said the Lancet.