New Delhi: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said Class 10 and 12 students will get an option of appearing for board examinations twice a year from the academic session 2025-26.The minister said the move has been made to reduce academic stress.
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisages biannual board exams to provide students with ample opportunities to excel academically.
According to the New Curriculum Framework (NCF) announced by the Ministry of Education in August last year, board examinations will be held at least twice a year to ensure students have enough time and opportunity to perform well. They will also get the option to retain the best score.
Pradhan asked students present at the function if they were happy with the decision, and told them to keep the best marks obtained after appearing in both the exams.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji’s vision through the NEP is to keep students stress-free, enrich them with quality education, keep students linked with culture and prepare them for the future. This is the formula for making India a developed country by 2047,” he said.
The new system of twice-a-year board exams for Class 10th and Class 12th is not mandatory.
The education minister was speaking at an event in Chhattisgarh. The union minister on Monday launched the PM SHRI (Prime Minister Schools for Rising India) scheme in Chhattisgarh under which 211 schools of the state will be upgraded.
In the first phase of the PM SHRI scheme, 211 schools (193 elementary level and 18 secondary ones) will be upgraded in Chhattisgarh on a ‘hub and spoke’ model by spending ₹2 crore on each of them, the Union minister said.
Under the model, the mentor institution, called the ‘hub’, will be centralised and have the responsibility of guiding the mentee institution through the secondary branches, the ‘spoke’, via services provided to the mentee for self-improvement.
Meanwhile, the class 10 and 12 exams for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) began on 15 February across the country and 26 other countries.
As per the CBSE, this year, more than 39 lakh students from India and 26 other countries will take the exam.
The board examinations for Class 10 will conclude on March 13, 2024, and Class 12 board exams will finish on April 2.
