NEP's stress buster: Board exams twice a year, suggest education ministry

Education minister releases National Curriculum framework recommending provision for students to retain best score from either of their attempts

Board exams will be made “easier” to assess analytical understanding rather than rote learning and held twice a year allowing students to retain the best score from either of their attempts, recommended the Ministry of Education’s new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) released on Wednesday.

It also said that students in Classes 11 and 12 must study two languages instead of one, including an Indian language. Ninth and tenth graders would have to learn three languages, as against two mandated now. The changes will come into effect from the next academic year.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan handed over the NCF to the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), paving the way for developing school syllabi and textbooks. The NCF, prepared according to the new National Education Policy (NEP) by the national steering committee led by former Indian Space Research Organisation chief K Kasturirangan, has advised reducing the curriculum content load in each subject to its core essentials to make space for critical thinking and analysis-based learning.

To further eliminate the “high stakes” aspect of boards, students will be allowed to take the examinations at least twice in any given year, with only the best score being retained, it stated. In the long term, “semester-wise” or “on-demand” board exams will also be made available.

“Students can then appear for a board exam in subjects they have completed and feel ready for,” the NCF said. The process of on-demand exams would be made possible by creating a comprehensive test item bank that can be used to develop tests with suitable software.

Kamlesh Vyas, partner, Deloitte India, welcomed the move to conduct board exams twice a year. “It is aligned to the NEP 2020 recommendations. A single board examination was a very high-stakes test and caused immense stress for young students. A two-exam system with a ‘better of two’ consideration for results will help to reduce their stress.”

The NCF also calls for streamlining of course content. For example, biology has a reputation for being descriptive, and students often have to remember many facts without context. “This produces students who have a lot of factual knowledge but are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of modern life sciences,” it explained.

Besides, the choice of subjects in Classes 11 and 12 will not be restricted to streams such as arts, science and commerce. There will be no “hard separation” of the streams but choices can be flexible and multidisciplinary, the framework said, adding that board exam test evaluators would have to go through university-certified courses before taking this up.

Currently, students from 9 to 12 mandatorily study five subjects with the option of an additional subject. According to the NCF recommendations, the number of mandatory subjects will be seven for Classes 9-10 and six for Classes 11-12. Students of Classes 9 and 10 will also have to study “environmental education” as an interdisciplinary subject.

In short, the NCF said that to get a grade 12 certificate, students should pass the following board examinations — two in languages, four from at least two of three groups such as social science, mathematical and computational thinking, science and languages (with one additional optional exam). They will also need to pass subjects from art education, physical education, and vocational education, but these would have local assessments with board certification.

It has also recommended changing the nomenclature of the secondary and senior secondary into one secondary stage divided into two phases — Classes 9 and 10, and 11 and 12; that is “four years of multidisciplinary study” across all curricular areas.

“In 10 years, all school systems should move to a single secondary stage, where students have choice and flexibility right from grade 9, following the current curricular structure of grades 11 and 12,” it said, in line with the NEP vision for the secondary stage.

In the report, Kasturirangan said the steering committee consulted 1.3 million stakeholders, including students and parents, and over 150,000 teachers and educationists from across the country. The consultations were in addition to over 600 papers on 25 relevant themes written by groups set up by states and Union Territories, which altogether had over 4,000 experts.

The detailed National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) was released on October 20, 2022. The National Curriculum Frameworks for Teacher Education and for Adult Education will be released soon, Kasturirangan said.

(With inputs from Debarghya Sanyal)