The Curious Case of West Bengal’s Disappearing Class 12 Students

Recently, I came across some surprising statistics. In West Bengal, for the final exam of Class 12, this year (2025) almost 3 lakhs fewer students appeared compared to previous years. The figure sounded mind-bogglingly shocking to me. The board secretary highlighted that this happened because they brought in a rule in 2017 - that mandated students need to be 10 years old in Class 5. Still, the 3…