New Delhi, May 13 -- The dip in the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) Class 12 pass percentage this year is a reflection of changes introduced in the assessment scheme, School Education Secretary Sanjay Kumar said on Wednesday after the Board declared results for the 2026 examinations.

The overall pass percentage stood at 85.20 per cent this year, down by 3.19 percentage points from last year's 88.39 per cent.

Of the 17,80,365 students who registered for the examination, 17,68,968 appeared and 15,07,109 passed.

This year also saw CBSE adopt full-scale On-Screen Marking (OSM) for Class 12 answer-sheet evaluation, with 98,66,622 answer books assessed digitally in what the Board described as its biggest OSM exercise so far.

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