The board examinations for classes 10 and 12 are landmark examinations for students. There are several educational boards in our country that conduct these examinations.

One such board is CBSE. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is central educational board that affiliates are a large number of schools and provides them guidance and expertise in the process of imparting education.

CBSE regularly conducts the board examinations for classes 10 and 12 on a yearly basis. The board exams are national level exams as all students appearing for CBSE Board Exams have to appear for the same question paper, and the same evaluation process is followed for all.

This makes the boards, a very crucial exam for the students. CBSE is currently preparing to conduct the board examinations for 2020.

It has been known that CBSE has introduced a number of changes in the examination pattern for both classes 10 and 12. Answering to an unstarred question on this topic raised by Members of Parliament Kesari Dev Patel and Chirag Paswan, Union Minister for the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank stated that changes would be put into effect from the batch of 2019-20 itself.

The Honourable Minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, also talked about the significance and intention of introducing such changes. He points out that the changes in the exam pattern have been strategically designed to discourage students from vague and rote learning. Students generally mug up entire chapters without understanding the meaning of it.

Thus, in order to develop a sense of understanding, helping students to carry out an in-depth study and at the same time to prevent the students from a mental burden in the form of examinations, CBSE decided to introduce some important changes. These changes will include the following –

• Introduction of more objective questions.
• Reduction in the number of subjective questions.
• Introducing internal assessments in every subject.
• Reduction in the overall number of questions.
• Providing more internal choices to the students.

In his reply, the Minister put forward how the changes will be implemented in the question paper. According to him, 33% of the question paper will witness the implementation of Internal choices for the students. As much as 25% of the questions will comprise of the objective type questions.

These will be of one mark each and will be implemented for all the subjects. For subjects that do not comprise of any practical assessments, 20% marks will be assigned for internal assessments.

These changes are to encourage the critical thinking of the students and evaluate their reasoning abilities. Students appearing for the board exams in 2020, must acquaint themselves well with these changes and prepare accordingly.