PESHAWAR: As many as 56 per cent candidates failed Part-I of the annual intermediate examination as the Peshawar Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education announced results on Saturday.

A total of 66,695 students sat the exam but only 44 per cent of them, totalling 29,487, passed it.

The failure rate among boys was high compared to girls, show the exam results.

The board said 39,733 boys sat the examination as regular candidates but 12,633 remained successful, with the failure rate being 68.3 per cent.

It added that 22,663 girls appeared in the examination as regular students and 14,722 of them passed, taking the pass percentage to 65.

Also, 1,473 girls took the exam as private candidates and 1,051 of them were declared successful. Similarly, 2,826 boys sat the exam as private candidates and1,081 of them passed it.

The exam results showed that only 3,651 students got A1 grade, 9,930 A grade and11,517 B grade.

Sources in the education board linked the high failure percentage to changes in paper pattern and strict checking in the examination halls to check cheating.

In the previous annual examination, the education board introduced a cluster system under which students of private and government schools took papers in a combined examination hall. That is unlike the previous system under which students of private schools used to take exams in their own schools.

The sources said that 40 per cent of each paper was based on the student learning outcome instead of the traditional rote learning.

They said schools and colleges in far-off areas or in the peripheries of cities without the cluster system didn’t produce “that bad” exam results.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2025