The resullts of West Bengal board of Madrasah examinations were declared, and unusually high number of girls had made it to the merit list. Many girls from different disticts had made it to the merit list.  Almost 70% are girls who took the High madrasa  examination in 2018. The reasons were cited as schemes promoting girls education such as  Kanyashree, the conditional cash transfer scheme, and Sabuj Sathi, the scheme of providing bicycles to school-going girls. In a State with a skewed child sex ratio (960 females to 1,000 males as per 2011 census) 70% female students taking a board examination is indicative of a huge drop out among boys. The boys were dropping but migrating to other states for work. “Most of the High Madrasas are located in Malda and Murshidabad districts and the boys in these districts have a tendency to drop out and migrate for jobs to other States,” Sheikh Abu Taher Kamruddin, president of the West Bengal Board of Madrasah Education, told The Hindu. The high number of girls writing the Class X board examination is also visible in the statistics of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination. Of the 11,02,921 candidates who had appeared for the examinations in 2018, the number of girls appeared stood at 6,21,266 (56.3%) while the number of boys appeared was 4,81,555 (43.66%).“These statistics clearly indicate that dropout of school-going boys is higher in certain pockets of the States, particularly in the minority-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad,” said Sabir Ahamed, chief researcher with Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Trust.