On October 9, the Supreme Court sought a response from the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) on the pleas alleging that that board failed to calculate marks as per the 30:30:40 formula approved by the top court. Thus, failing to address the issues of students and compute the marks based on their actual performance.
Justices AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar asked the CBSE to respond to the plea by October 18. The case has been posted for hearing on October 20. The pleas filed by students who graduated high school this year alleged that the CBSE failed to implement the procedure of dispute redressal mechanism to Class 12 exams which were not cancelled due to the pandemic. The dispute redressal mechanism was issued in the circular on August 2021 in accordance with the top court order issued on June 17.
So what exactly is this 30:30:40 formula? On June 17, the apex court had approved the assessment schemes of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the CBSE. The court directed them to adopt the 30:30:40 formula for evaluation of marks for students based on results of Classes 10, 11, and 12 respectively. As per this formula, the CBSE would evaluate the marks of Class 12 students for theory based on 30 per cent marks from Class 10 board, 30 per cent from Class 11 and 40 per cent from marks based on the performance in the unit, mid-term and pre-board tests in Class 12.
At the same time, the court had mentioned that the assessment scheme must include the provision of dispute resolution in case students want correction of the final results. The pleas filed by students alleged that CBSE showed the mechanism for dispute resolution only on the paper and didn't implement it in reality. They sought direction from the court to declared the results based on the 30:30:40 formula and consider the actual marks obtained by them.
