Explained: CBSE's New Assessment Scheme For Classes 10 And 12 Exams For 2021-22 Session

Amidst the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a new assessment scheme for Class 10 and 12 students for academic year 2021-22.

The students have been seeing continuing school closures and examination disruptions due to COVID-19 since 2020. This year, CBSE had to first postpone, then eventually cancel the year-end board exams due to the second wave of the pandemic.

For the 2020-21 academic year, CBSE announced a scheme for calculation of final marks of the students. It asked the schools to use a combination of scores from Class 10, 11 and 12 and internal marks.

To save the students in the classes 10 and 12 for the 2021-22 academic year from uncertainty, CBSE issued a notification yesterday night (5 July), announcing a new assessment scheme.

The board announced that it will reduce the syllabus, hold board examinations twice during the year in different formats, and ensure continuous recording of internal assessment scores in order to have a variety of options to calculate a final score at the end of the year.

“The syllabus for the Board examination 2021-22 will be rationalised similar to that of the last academic session,” said the notification. Last year, the examination syllabus was reduced by 30 per cent.

The 2021-22 academic year is divided into two terms. Each term will cover 50 per cent of the syllabus, with board exams at the end of each term. The CBSE has reportedly made provisions for different assessment scenarios depending on the pandemic situation.

As per The Hindu report, the first term exam will be held between November-December 2021 on a flexible schedule. The schools situated in different parts of the country will have a window period of 4-8 weeks for conducting the exam. It will be a 90-minute paper with multiple choice questions only.

While the first term exam is likely to be conducted in schools with the supervision of external superintendents, the second term exam will be held in examination centres in March-April 2022.

It is likely to be a two-hour exam with various question formats. However, if the pandemic situation is not conducive for a long, descriptive exam, the second term exam will also be in a multiple choice question format.

If both term exams are held, the final theory marks will be equally split between the two.

However, in case the pandemic causes the schools to be closed down in November and December, the first term exams will be conducted online or in homes, and would carry reduced weightage in the final results.

On the other hand, if the pandemic situation is not conducive to conducting the exams in March-April, and the second term exams cannot be held, CBSE would increase weightage for the first term exam scores and internal assessment marks in the final results.

However, if the schools are completely closed during both the first and second term exams, they will be conducted at home. In this case, 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.

The notification also stated that CBSE will issue guidelines to make internal assessments, practicals and project work more credible and valid to ensure fair distribution of marks.

CBSE also asked the schools to create a student profile for all assessments done over the year. The schools will have to retain them all in digital format, with marks uploaded onto the board's IT platform