Chandigarh: Chandigarh’s CBSE Class 12 pass percentage fell by 3.03% points this year. While medical and non-medical streams recorded a decline of more than eight and 10 percentage points respectively, the number of students scoring above 90% almost doubled.The UT recorded an overall pass percentage of 92.29% for Class XII in 2026, compared to 95.32% last year. At the national level, the CBSE pass percentage dropped from 88.39% to 85.20%.Data released by the Chandigarh education department for government senior secondary schools showed a similar trend. The overall pass percentage in government schools declined from 88.79% last year to 87.25% this year. Of the 10,255 students who appeared, 8,948 passed.The sharpest decline was recorded in the science stream.The pass percentage of the medical stream dropped from 93.25% in 2025 to 82.88% this year, showing a decline of 10.37 percentage points. Non-medical declined from 87.71% to 79.06%, while commerce fell from 92.05% to 88.92%.Humanities has emerged as the only mainstream stream to improve, with the pass percentage increasing to 87.94% from 86.50% last year. Skills courses recorded the best performance overall with 97.17%, better than last session’s 94.68%.The results come amid major changes in the CBSE evaluation process. This year, the board implemented ‘On Screen Marking’ (OSM) for Class XII answer sheets and expanded competency-based assessment under NEP-2020, with more focus on conceptual understanding and application-based questions rather than rote learning. Officials linked the nationwide decline in results to the strict evaluation pattern.Despite the decline in the overall passing percentage, the number of people scoring high marks increased rapidly.The number of students scoring 90% and above increased from 225 last year to 348 this year. Similarly, the number of those scoring above 95% almost doubled from 29 to 57.Two schools recorded a pass percentage above 95%, while 16 schools crossed the 90% mark.Girls once again performed better than boys. Among government school candidates, the passing percentage of girls was 90.55%, while the passing percentage of boys was 84.51%.The results point to a growing gap between streams in Chandigarh’s Class 12 performance this year. While science and commerce subjects saw a significant decline in the pass percentage under the strict assessment pattern, humanities and skills courses recorded improvement, even as the number of students scoring above 90% and 95% increased sharply despite the overall decline.