The students for the past 2 years have been highly affected by the country-wide spread of the coronavirus. In the year 2020, the board exams for classes 10 and 12 were earlier postponed and later cancelled. The students were ranked as per the alternate evaluation plan. In the year 2021 as well, the class 10 boards were cancelled in April and postponed for class 12, which were cancelled in June due to the rising covid cases.
Due to the continuing school closures and disruption in examination procedures due to Covid-19, CBSE has now issued a new assessment scheme for the batch of Class 10 and 12 students of the year batch of 2021-22.
Yesterday, the CBSE issued a notification regarding the new evaluation scheme for the students of Class 10 and 12. The notice comes due to the evident uncertainty during the 2020-21 academic year, due to the second wave of COVID-19. As a result, the CBSE had to postpone and later cancel the year-end board examinations. As an alternative CBSE finally came to the conclusion to use a combination of Class 10,11 and 12 scores and internal marks to calculate the final results.
In consideration of the difficulties faced by students in the distance-online-learning method adopted by the schools, the notice states that “The Board has also considered the concerns regarding differential availability of electronic gadgets, connectivity and effectiveness of online teaching and other socio-economic issues especially with respect to students from economically weaker section and those residing in far-flung areas of the country.”
The said notice with the subject “Special Scheme of Assessment for Board Examination Classes X and XII for the Session 2021-22”, addressed to all the heads of schools affiliated to CBSE, in circular number Acad-51/2021, dated 5th July 2021, has stated certain changes for Class 10 and 12 board assessments, “in line with the Board’s continued focus on assessing stipulated learning outcomes by making the examinations competencies and core concepts based, transparent, technology-driven, and having advance provision of alternatives for different future scenarios.”
The special assessment scheme for the class 10 and 12 board exams includes:
- Academic session to be divided into 2 Terms with approximately 50% syllabus in each term
- The syllabus for board exams 2021-22 will be rationalised.
- Efforts will be made to make Internal Assessment/ Practical/ Project work more credible and valid as per the guidelines and Moderation Policy to be announced by the Board to ensure fair distribution of marks.
The Term 1 exam will be conducted on a flexible schedule between November-December 2021 with a window period of 4-8 weeks for all the parts of the country. The exam will be for 90 minutes with only multiple-choice questions, which are to be answered under external supervision.
The Term 2 exam would be conducted in March- April 2022 in various examination centres, and is likely to be a 2-hour exam including both subjective and objective questions. If the pandemic situation is not conducive, the second term exam will also be conducted with a multiple-choice question format.
Specific provisions have been made for different assessment scenarios depending on the pandemic situation.
- If both the term exams are held, the final theory marks will be equally split between the two.
- If the schools are completely closed due to pandemic, in November and December, the first term exams will be conducted online or in homes, and would carry reduced weightage in the final results.
- If the second term exams cannot be held as well, the final results would be based on an increased weightage for the first term exam scores and internal assessment marks.
- If schools are closed, and both the first and second term exams have to be conducted at home, the final results will include weightage for the scores in internal assessment, projects and practical work, as well as both term-end examinations.
“In all the above cases, data analysis of marks of students will be undertaken to ensure the integrity of internal assessments and home-based exams,” said the notification issued by CBSE academic director Joseph Emmanuel.
