Chennai: Schools in Chennai district, cutting across categories, have marginally improved their performance in the 2025-26 academic year. Data shared by the chief education office showed that schools run by the education department recorded a 89.94 pass percentage for 2025-26, with 7,771 of 8,649 students passing the exam — a jump from 87.43% recorded in the previous academic year.A total of 4,778 of 5,179 corporation school students passed, recording a 92.26 pass percentage, up from 88.12% recorded in 2024-25. As for adi dravidar schools, 310 out of 376 students passed the test, with a pass percentage of 82.4 — up from 82.14% recorded last year.Further, aided schools logged a pass percentage of 94.8 and private schools, 98%. “We jumped from 23rd rank to 20th in the overall pass percentage and from mid-30s to 29 in the performance of govt schools (corporation, adi ravidar and schools run by the education department). As many as 170 out of 578 schools recorded a 100% pass, and five of them were govt schools,” chief education officer M Kabir said.A total of 270 students scored centum in maths, history, biology, physics, chemistry, commerce, accountancy and economics. Of them, 195 were from aided schools and 75 from govt schools. Overall, the district recorded a pass percentage of 95.43 this year.Parents and teachers welcomed the improvement, but said there is a long way to go. “There are still several districts ahead of us, despite Chennai having all the infrastructural facilities and resource centres. Even Ramanathapuram is ahead of us (rank 12). We should ideally find a place in the top five, but that hasn’t happened in the last decade. There is a need for periodic review and a complete re-haul of the educational approach to improve in rankings,” said S Arumainathan, president, TN Students Parents Welfare Association.
