According to the various media reports, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has released a notification which consists of tentative dates for the practical exam and has issues fresh SOPs to schools. The tentative dates have been announced a day after CBSE Secretary confirmed to media that CBSE board exams will be conducted in 2021 for sure and the dates will be announced soon. As per the notification released, the practical exams shall start from January 01 and will continue till February 08, 2021.
According to the notification released, these dates for the practical exam are tentative and the board will announce the exact dates soon at its official website – cbse.nic.in.
Speaking during a webinar on New Education Policy (NEP), the CBSE Secretary ended all the rumors asserting that the board exams shall get cancelled in the year 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic. There were some media reports too as per which the board was considering to cancel the practical examination. However, all the assumptions and rumors were put to rest as Tripathi asserted that the board is making plan to conduct the exam and will soon revel complete details.
Another major change done by the board is in the marking scheme of class 12th. The board already reduced class 12th syllabus by 30 per cent and now as per some media reports, the CBSE 12th question papers will have more weightage for multiple-choice based questions and those based on case studies. The number of weightage of MCQ type questions have been increased by 10 per cent. In subjects like physics, the Board has introduced questions based on thinking skills such as ascertaining and reasoning. On the other hand, for Biology, MCQs are replaced with short-answer type questions.
Additionally, CBSE also issued Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for schools for conducting the practical examination in 2021. The details included in the SOP are like each school will have different dates for the practical exam. There will be both external and internal examiner present during the practical exam and furthermore, practical exam and project evaluation work will be done at the respective school only. Once the evaluation of the practical exam and project evaluation is done, the schools will need to upload marks on the link provided by the board.
CBSE Board Exam 2021 Date Sheet for Class 10 and 12 is much awaited. While assuring that the board exams will be conducted for sure, the question now arises how much schools and students are ready for the same. Ever since schools in India have been shut down since March, many students, parents and teachers hope that the board exams to be postponed from March and to be held in May. The board’s secretary earlier in an interview said that it’s too soon to decide on the dates.