With the Covid-19 pandemic still prevalent, the CBSE on Monday decided to divide the upcoming academic session for classes 10 and 12 into two terms – with board exams at the end of each term.
The Special Scheme of Assessment for the 2021-22 academic session would follow the “rationalised syllabus”, which would be notified later this month, and efforts would be made to make internal assessment, practical, project work more credible and valid as per the guidelines. A moderation policy will be announced by the board to ensure fair distribution of marks.
The first term exams will be held in November-December, 2021, based on the 50 per cent syllabus allocated, while the second term exams will be conducted in March-April, 2022, covering the remaining part of the rationalised syllabus.
“This has been done to increase the probability of having a board conducted classes X and XII examinations at the end of the academic session,” Joseph Emmanuel, Director (Academic), CBSE said in a circular to all affiliated schools.
For classes 9-10, internal assessment would include three periodic tests, student enrichment, portfolio and practical work/speaking listening activities/project.
The internal assessment for class 11-12 would include end-of-topic or unit tests/exploratory activities/practicals/projects.
“Schools would create a student profile for all assessments undertaken over the year and retain the evidence in digital format. The CBSE will facilitate schools to upload marks of Internal Assessment on the CBSE IT platform,” the circular said.
The first term examinations would include multiple choice questions (MCQ) – both case-based and assertion-reasoning types. The duration of the exams would be 90-minutes and cover the syllabus earmarked for the first term. The second term exams would be of two-hour duration and will have questions in different formats including case-based, situation-based, open-ended, short answer/long answer-type.
“In case the situation is not conducive for normal descriptive examination a 90-minute MCQ-based exam will be conducted at the end of the term II also,” the circular said.