The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is planning to conduct Class X and XII board exams a month earlier from the next session that is 2018-19. So the exams would be conducted in February instead of March. This move is a part of the reforms aimed at “error free evaluation”. The evaluation process has lately come under the scanner owing to its glaring errors. Under this new process, the CBSE is planning to employ the best of the teachers to evaluate the answer sheets of the board exams.
Confirming the change, the CBSE chairman R.K. Chaturvedi said, “By April, vacations begin and the experienced teachers are not available. Therefore, advancing evaluation to mid-March will ensure we have the best teachers checking the answer scripts. Otherwise, in April during vacations, schools offer us only temporary, ad-hoc and newly-appointed teachers for the evaluation exercise as experienced teachers don’t oblige”.
The board has also scheduled two extensive training sessions for the evaluators. “Just like teachers’ training, we are planning two evaluators’ training sessions each year starting December 2017,” added the Chairperson.
Another change that the board is aiming at is to cut down on the number of days involved in the process. Presently, the board examination begins around the 1st of March and is dragged until around 20th of April. Instead of spreading it over a period of about 45 days, the CBSE is planning to bring it down to one month. Talking about the same, Chaturvedi said, “The examinations should start around February 15 and we are also planning to complete them within a month”.
This will also advance the result declaration. As per the board, the early declaration of result will be helpful for the students as they take on the undergraduate admission process. “Otherwise it has been a neck and-neck affair,” he added.
The board has also taken the decision to scrap the process of re-evaluation. This is because the number of students filing for re-evaluation is extremely low. Besides, there is a shortage of expert teachers during the time of re-evaluation because of summer vacations and it also disturbs the processes that follow, that is, that of the compartment examinations and admissions. Sharing his views on the same, Chaturvedi said, “I think there is no point in allowing re-evaluation of 10 questions. Either it should be allowed in totality or not at all. The matter is also in court. But if we can ensure that evaluations themselves are error-free, the question of re-evaluation will not arise.”
Well, we hope these steps taken by the CBSE prove beneficial for the students as well as the board members.