Girls outshone boys again in the Class XII board exam results announced by the Tamil Nadu School Education Department on Wednesday. The state saw a slight dip in the pass percentage of students.

Tamil Nadu had last year abolished the policy of announcing the first three overall ranks and districts ranks as part of a major overhaul in the school education system.

The government also brought many changes in the system to prepare students to write competitive exams and national-level entrance exams like NEET.

Announcing the results, School Education Minister K A Sengottaiyan said the pass percentage for girls was 94.1%, while it was 87.7% for boys, close to 1.5% drop from last year. Girls have outshone boys in Tamil Nadu and the trend has been consistent for the last few years.

“Overall, the pass percentage is 91.1%, a 1% drop from last year. Though some found the question papers to be tough when compared with the previous year, it will help students in the long run,” the minister said.

Experts attributed the slight fall in pass percentage to the syllabus that was revised with an objective to prepare students to appear for NEET. Tamil Nadu tried very hard last year to get its students exempted from appearing for NEET.

Sengottaiyan also warned schools and coaching institutes against publishing rank lists of students of their institutes. Schools and institutes publish full-page advertisements in vernacular newspapers with photographs of the students to boost their intake for the next academic year.

Virudhunagar district in southern Tamil Nadu topped the state by recording a pass percentage of over 97%, though it saw a dip of nearly 1% from 2017.

Among the various branches, science students performed the best with over 94% of them clearing the exam, followed by commerce stream students with over 87% pass percentage. Around 80% of the students from arts and vocational streams cleared the exam.