Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s Class 12 board examination results for 2026 reflected a familiar regional trend, with western and southern districts continuing to outperform the rest of the state as the overall pass percentage rose marginally to 95.20 per cent.
Among districts, Erode secured the top position with an impressive 98.87 per cent, followed by Sivagangai at 98.05 per cent and Kanniyakumari at 97.63 per cent. The results underline the sustained academic dominance of districts from the Kongu belt and southern Tamil Nadu.
The western region once again put up a strong show, with Coimbatore and Tiruppur remaining among the top-performing districts. Both districts had recorded pass percentages above 97 per cent last year and maintained their strong performance this year as well. Virudhunagar and Perambalur too figured among the high-scoring districts.
In contrast, Chennai and several northern districts continued to trail behind the state leaders, though the capital city maintained a pass percentage above 94 per cent, consistent with recent years.
The district-wise trend also mirrors the 2025 results, when Ariyalur topped the state with 98.82 per cent, followed closely by Erode (97.98 per cent), Tiruppur (97.53 per cent), Coimbatore (97.48 per cent), Kanniyakumari (97.01 per cent) and Sivagangai (96.71 per cent). Education officials noted that districts with consistently high-performing government-aided and private schools continued to dominate the rankings.
Overall, 7,53,694 students cleared the examinations out of the 7,91,654 who appeared this year. Girls continued to outperform boys across districts, registering a pass percentage of 97 per cent, compared to 93.19 per cent among boys.
Among school categories, private schools recorded the highest success rate at 98.72 per cent, followed by government-aided schools at 96.14 per cent. Government schools registered 92.16 per cent.
Science stream students recorded the best performance among streams with a pass percentage of 96.9 per cent, while commerce students secured 92.67 per cent. Arts and vocational streams recorded 85.19 per cent and 85.97 per cent respectively.