The decision to revert to single board examinations for Class X and XII will be taken in due course of time, said a senior Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) official.
"As far as 2022-2023 academic session is concerned whatever decision will be taken will be communicated to you," CBSE's Controller of Exam Sanyam Bharadwaj told The Hindu. He underlined though that the decision to split the Board exams into two was taken only for the academic session 2021-2022 in view of COVID-19.
The first term board examination was held in December 2021 and January 2022, and the second term board examination starts from April 26.
While the the first term exams used only multiple choice objective type questions which had to be completed within 90 minutes, the second term exams will include subjective type questions, with short and long answers, and have to be answered within two hours.
On the issue of how much weightage would be given to the two examinations, Mr. Bharadwaj said, " we will take a decision on that when we prepare the results of term 2".
“Schools are in favour of one-time examinations because board exams require a different kind of set up and involves collection of papers, maintaining confidentiality, privacy, arranging high security system and then conducting the exam, carrying out the evaluation and posting the marks. It is a big exercise, and doing this twice is taxing for both students and schools,” said Jyoti Arora, Principal of Mt Abu School.
However, Mr. P Vishnucharan, Correspondent, Shree Niketan Group of Schools in Chennai differed.
“As CBSE decides whether to revert to a single Board exam, is it carrying out a consultative process to understand the impact of splitting it into two semester exams. In a way having two term exams is quite effective because it ensures that students learn throughout the year, otherwise the tendency of the students is to study only post December,” Mr. Vishnucharan said. He added that two-term exams may also help students who don’t do well the first time and can improve their performance in the second term exam.
Ms. Arora added that the term one exam should not be given more than 30% weightage as it was different from the standard Board exam pattern students are familiar with.
