CBSE:”Revamping Board Exams: CBSE’s Biannual Examination Initiative”

The Ministry of Education has requested the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to plan and organize logistics for conducting board exams twice a year from the 2025-26 academic session.

This plan will not include a semester system. The ministry and CBSE will hold consultations with school principals next month to discuss this matter. The CBSE is currently figuring out how to structure the academic calendar to accommodate an additional set of board exams without affecting the undergraduate admission schedule.

The board is working on the modalities of conducting board exams twice a year. A consultation will be organized next month with school principals. The idea is to conduct two editions of board exams at the end of the year from the 2025-26 academic session. However, the modalities still need to be worked out.

There is no plan to implement the semester system.

Initially, the ministry’s plan was to introduce biannual board exams from the 2024-25 academic session, but it has been postponed by a year. The new national curriculum framework (NCF) proposed a semester system for students of classes 11 and 12, in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

The framework also proposed that students be given the option to write their board exams twice a year.

The CBSE is currently brainstorming a schedule so that students can obtain maximum benefit and the goal of making board exams stress-free can be achieved.

The logistics of conducting exams is tiresome, so the plan has to be flawless. Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had confirmed that appearing for board exams twice a year won’t be mandatory for students

The Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) was introduced for Class 10 in 2009 but was revoked in 2017, and the board reverted to the old model of year-end exams. Board exams for classes 10 and 12 were also split into two terms during the Covid pandemic as a one-time measure, but the old format of year-end exams resumed this year