Nagpur: Following in the footsteps of their seniors, girls scored over boys in the secondary school certificate examination in Maharashtra, coming on top in seven of the eight divisional boards besides giving a higher pass percentage. But they conceded the top slot in the state to a boy from Satara.

As many as 1,199,468 of 1,389,446 students who appeared for the examination from 18,996 secondary schools passed, giving a record pass percentage of 86.33. The result of the SSC exam, held by the state education board in March, was declared on Thursday without merit list as per the government policy.

Maharashtra Board Class 10 Results 2008

The result, however, reveals that Gaurav Kulkarni from Satara in Kolhapur division has scored the maximum - 97.84 percent marks in the state.

While Gaurav is naturally the topper also from his division, it is girls on top everywhere else including Madhura Naik in Mumbai. She, however, shares the spot with a boy, Pratik Ramdasi.

Girls excelled in the higher secondary school certificate examination (HSSC) too, earlier this month.

The division-wise toppers are Bilwa Upadhye (Pune), Kalyani Suryavanshi (Nashik), Surabhi Ganvir (Nagpur), Pooja Wankhede (Amravati), Sneha Daliya (Aurangabad), Sayli Sagar (Latur), and Madhura Naik along with Pratik Ramdasi (Mumbai).

Two other girls, Pooja Parmar and Shweta Patel, are toppers respectively from the backward castes and physically challenged categories. The overall pass percentage of girls (549,614 out of 628,783) is 87.41 as against 85.43 (649,854 out of 760,663) registered by boys.

The pass percentage in the state, which chronically hovered around 50 till 2002, showed a marked improvement over the last six years, thanks to several steps taken by the education department including up-gradation of teaching standards, revamp of school curricula and exam pattern and lenient valuation. IANS