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

Analysis by MoE shows students prefer Hindi and English as medium of instruction, impacting pass rates in 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.