Hindi, English most preferred medium of instruction languages for Class 10 and 12 board exams

A majority of students appearing in Class 10 and 12 board exams preferred Hindi as a medium of instruction, followed by English, an analysis conducted by the Ministry of Education (MoE) pointed out.

As compared to Hindi and English, students opting for 16 regional languages as medium of instruction — Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Odia, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Assamese, Punjabi, Malayalam, Bodo, Sanskrit, Nepali, Santhali and Manipuri — ranged in single digits from 0.9% to 6.1%.

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The analysis includes a total of 1,85,26,013 students who appeared for Class 10, and 1,49,24,580 students who appeared for Class 12 board exams in 2024.

While on average 88% of all Class 10 students who appeared for the board exams passed, for medium of instructions like Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu and Assamese, the pass percentage of students is lower than the national average, officials point out. “Only 82.7% students who appeared for Class 10 exams in Gujarati passed, while only 75.4% of those who appeared in Kannada passed. Both in Telugu and Assamese, 79.8% of students who appeared passed. This is lower than the national pass percentage of 88%,” a senior MoE official said.

Meanwhile, the pass percentage for students studying in the Malayalam medium was 99.9%, much higher than the national average; so it was for Odia - 98%, and Manipuri and Punjabi - 96.2%.

Similarly, officials have expressed concern about the low pass percentage of Class 12 students with Telugu as a medium of instruction. “While 86.5% of 1,49,24,580 students who appeared for Class 12 passed, among these only 61.7% of 1,06,936 students who appeared from Telugu medium passed,” the senior MoE official said.

Meanwhile, ranging between 90.5% to 92.3%, students studying in Tamil, Nepali, Punjabi and Manipuri had a much higher pass percentage than the national average of 86.5%, officials said.

Interestingly, while the pass percentage of Gujarati medium students was lower than the national average for Class 10, it was at 92.6% for Class 12, which is higher than national average.

Data analysed by MoE also suggested that a majority of students, an average of up to 39.3% belonging to government, government-aided aided and private schools, opted for Hindi as a medium of instruction when appearing for Class 10 and 12 board exams.

While fewer students (31.4%) opted for English as a primary language for medium of instruction in Class 10, more students — 38.6% — picked English for Class 12.

Many State Boards follow regional language as the medium of instruction till Class 10 and switch over to English in Class 12.

“For instance, if a student studies in Kannada medium till Class 10 and enrols in English in Class 12, s/he will have great difficulty in comprehending and adjusting to a new language. This also leads to a lower pass percentage in Class 12,” another senior MoE official explained.

Officials said that in order to remove disparity between differences in pass percentage among various boards, there needed to be an emphasis on standardising assessment processes, curriculum, paper setting, and exam spans. “These findings also create a strong case for curriculum and assessment equivalence across boards with different languages as a medium of instruction,” they said.

The Ministry of Education was grappling with the issue of retaining around 26.6 lakh Class 10 students in the formal school education system, of which 4.43 lakh did not appear for exams, and another 22.17 lakh failed and thus were unable to progress to Class 11 in 2024.

“Class 10 failure is one of the causes for low retention rate and Gross Enrolment Ratio at higher secondary levels,” the senior official pointed out.

Similarly, of the 24.76 lakh Class 12 students, 4.6 lakh not appearing for the exams, and another 20.16 lakh failing are a cause of concern for the MoE.

Published - June 19, 2025 10:23 pm IST