CBSE won’t advance board exams to Feb

NEWDELHI: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will hold its Class 10 and 12 finals from the first week of March as it junked a plan to advance the exams to February, sources said on Tuesday.

The country’s largest school board is also making efforts to reduce the duration of the finals, which drag for 45 to 50 days.

“We are hoping to start the exams by March first week. Due to Holi the exam might not start from March 1 but these things are being finalised. We are trying to conduct the exam in a shorter time period to give the evaluation process more time,” a senior CBSE official said.

Details about the duration couldn’t be known as the board has yet to fix the reduced timeframe.

Sources said a shorter exam period could bring forward the result date. Results are normally out in the third or fourth week of May. Next year will also mark the return of the compulsory Class 10 board exams for students studying at more than 18,000 schools affiliated to the CBSE. Students will no longer have the option to choose between the board exam or school assessment.

Nearly 1.1 million candidates registered for the CBSE Class 12 exam this year against 1.067 million last year, registering an increase of 2.82%. The number of centres and schools registered for the Class 12 exam were 3,502 and 10,678, respectively.

This June, the board was examining a proposal to hold the exams in February, instead of March, to give examiners more time to check answer-scripts. It called the plan a part of reforms aimed at making the evaluation process error-free. “The purpose is to have more time for evaluation and bring quality. The board will involve all stakeholders in the process,” the CBSE said then.