CBSE New Rules For Class 10: Easier To Pass Now; Board Removes Mandatory Separate Pass Criteria

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has renounced the mandatory separate pass criteria. As per the existing norms, the class 10th candidates were supposed to get 33% marks, separately in the internal assessment and the board examination, to qualify the examination. Now that the qualifying criteria has been changed, the candidates just need to secure 33% in aggregate.

The decision to remove the separate pass criteria was taken in a meet held on February 16, 2018. The Board considered various factors and came to the conclusion that since the class 10th board exams are being conducted after a long period of eight years, the student is not familiar will the process and assessment scheme.

Hence, only for the current batch of CBSE class 10th, as one time measure, the SEPARATE pass criteria has been removed. Candidates who will appear for the exams in the year 2019 shall not be exempted.

The current batch of the students will take exam for the 5 main subjects. The total marks of each subject will be 100, out of which 20 marks will be for the internal assessment and remaining 80 marks will be for the written examination. The student having addition subject is also exempted this year. However, this is only applicable if the subject includes internal assessment of 20 marks.

To clear all the doubts, CBSE has clearly mentioned in the circular that the exemption is also applicable for the students under NSQF scheme, for the 5 main subjects.

“The provision of replacement of subjects extended to NSQF students for the failed subjects (out of three subjects i.e. Science, Mathematics, and Social Science by the Vocational subject passed by the candidates under NSQF) would continue to apply as notified via Notification dated 09/03/2017.” – CBSE

Despite all, CBSE has clearly mentioned that mandatory separate pass criteria is applicable for subjects included in Annexure I of CBSE notification 31/01/2017. These are the additional subjects like: Home Science, FIT / ICT, Element of Business, Element of Book Keeping and Accountancy, E-publishing & E-office Hindi or English, Painting, Carnatic Music, Hindustani Music, and NCC. The Annexure also includes Language 1 and 2 and only for it the is exemption allowed. The passing marks in these subjects are as follows:

The exemption does not apply to the vocational courses as well. For vocational cou, ses the minimum passing marks in internal assessment and written exam is 50 each. In order to qualify, the candidates have to secure minimum of 33%, separately. Which is fair as well, because in the vocational courses the knowledge of assessment is equally important.

March seems promising for the students. CBSE has also announced that the students with special needs will be allowed to use computer for taking class 10 and 12 Board Exam 2018.

Few days back, Prakash Javadekar confirmed that NCERT Syllabus will be reduced to half. The trimming of syllabus will be done for class 1 to 12. This will remove a lot of burned and students will get time to for extra-curricula activities.

Can these small initiatives bring out a better education system? What are your thoughts on the matter? Let us know, in the comment section below.