The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to conduct board exams for classes 10 and 12 only once a year from the academic year 2022-23 onwards, switching to its previous practice.
The board last year announced two sets of board exams for students currently in classes 10 and 12 in order to prepare for any “unprecedented situation” that could have arisen because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The first set of exams were held in an objective multiple-choice format between November and December 2021, and the second set of exams are scheduled from April 26, 2022 as subjective or long-answer papers.
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There was speculations that the board would continue the two-term exam practice in the future as well since the move was recommended in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
However, a senior official at CBSE, who asked not to be named, said, “The board decided to conduct two-term exams for the session 2021-22 in order to avert any unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic. Even as the NEP 2020 favors two-term exams, it has been decided to switch to the previous practice for now and conduct one set of board exams at the end of the academic year. The stakeholders also suggested one exam policy .”
It means, for those who are now entering classes 10 and 12 only one set of board exams will be conducted at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.
The decision also comes at a time when school-leaving board exams will no longer be factored in for admissions to all central and several state universities. A centrally conducted admission test (Common University Entrance Test, or CUET) score will determine admissions from this year — a move that may diminish the importance of the board exams.
Principals and students of CBSE-affiliated schools welcomed the decision.
Meanwhile, for the 2021-22 batch, the board is yet to decide the weightage to be given to the term 1 and term 2 exams.“The board has received a large number of representations from schools requesting that more weightage be given to the second term exams. It is examining the representations to make a decision regarding the weightage,” the CBSE official cited above said.