Biannual board exams, focus on practicals — National Curriculum Framework for school education
New Delhi: The Ministry of Education announced Wednesday that Board examinations for classes 10 and 12 will now be held twice a year to reduce the burden on students. The decision is aimed at giving students an option to appear for it a second time and improve.
The announcement was part of the final National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023, which was handed over to Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan by the National Steering Committee and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on 28 July. The document was made public Wednesday. Formed in 2021 by the Ministry of Education, the National Steering Committee headed by former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan was tasked with the development of National Curriculum Frameworks.
According to a statement by the ministry, the curriculum – which is in accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) — is ready, and will form the basis for textbooks for the academic session starting April 2024.
Further, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for School Education 2023 suggests several reforms to the existing Board examination system to make it easier for students.
The document states: “Board examinations should be offered at least twice a year to ensure that students have enough time and opportunity to perform well. Students can then appear for a Board examination in subjects they have completed and feel ready for.”
In the final NCF for School Education 2023 document, NCERT also said this effort to improve students’ performance will be made possible by creating a “comprehensive test item bank” which can be used to create tests using suitable software.
In addition to this, to make the exam easier for students, the course content will be reduced and focus will be on assessing competencies rather than recounting facts.
“In the long term, all Boards should change to semester or term-based systems, where students can test in a subject as soon as they have completed the subject, which would further reduce the content load being tested in any one examination,” the document read.
It adds that the responsibility to “design and implement fair, reliable, and valid testing processes and instruments to assess achievement of the articulated competencies and certify students on the basis of this achievement” lies with boards of examination.
The framework also suggests that students of classes 11 and 12 will have to study two languages, one of which will have to be an Indian language.
Moreover, it adds that the choice of subjects in classes 11 and 12 will also not be restricted to streams such as arts, science and commerce to get flexibility to choose.
For subjects like vocational education, art education, and physical education, 75 percent of weightage of the assessment in overall certification will be given to demonstration-based assessment, and only 25 percent to any written examination.
According to the document, the boards will have to design and implement high-quality systems which can locally (at the school level) assess students on the basis of demonstration. For subjects like sciences, demonstration-based assessment — such as conducting experiments — will have 20-25 percent weightage in the overall certification of the subject.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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