Chandigarh, May 14 -- After the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) released the Class 12 board result on Wednesday, the Panchkula region of CBSE which comprises Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh secured a pass percentage of 85.73%. Of the 22 total CBSE regions, the Panchkula region performed 12th best in terms of pass percentage. Trivandrum region secured the highest pass percentage of 95.62% followed by the Chennai region at 93.84%. The Prayagraj region had the worst performance with a pass percentage of 72.43%. Last year, the Chandigarh region and Panchkula region were separate; however, this year they have been integrated into one. This follows the CBSE's shift of its regional office from Mohali to Sector 5 in Panchkula. Last year, the Chandigarh region which comprised Chandigarh, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh had secured a pass percentage of 91.61%. Panchkula region which earlier comprised Haryana and Himachal Pradesh had secured a pass percentage of 91.13%. This year, the pass percentage has faltered by over 5% for both these regions. A total of 74,324 students applied from the entire Panchkula region and 73,905 students appeared for the exams. This included 10,817 students from government schools, 58,108 students from private schools, 1,474 students from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) and 1,855 students from Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV). Around 113 students also appeared from Eklavya Model Residential Schools and 134 students appeared from private (full subject) schools. 1,404 students from the region appeared for compartment exams. Girls had a better pass percentage than boys with 88.92% of girls passing the exams compared to 83.16% of boys. A total of 40,147 boys and 32,354 girls appeared for the exams. There were a total of 983 schools and 308 exam centres in the whole Panchkula region. Meanwhile, the pass percentage of Chandigarh, according to CBSE data was 88.96%. Last year it was 90.91%. Girls performed better than boys with a pass percentage of 91.27% compared to 86.73% for boys. For Chandigarh, students from 102 schools appeared in the exams. A total of 19,110 students appeared from the city, including 9,747 boys and 9,363 girls. School-type wise in the UT, JNV schools of the city had a 100% pass rate, followed by KV schools with 98.26%, private schools with 92.29% and government schools with 87.25%. Government-aided schools had a pass percentage of 70.98%. According to the education department, Chandigarh, the decline in the overall pass percentage at both the national and UT level may be attributed to stricter and competency-based evaluation practices, greater emphasis on conceptual understanding under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and the introduction of digital evaluation of answer sheets through on-screen marking (OSM). The trend reflects a gradual shift from rote learning towards application-based assessment....