The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to conduct a single Board exam for Classes X and XII from 2022-23, which is the upcoming academic year. The announcement was made officially by the CBSE on April 15, 2022. Single Board exams were being held before the pandemic struck. Only for the current year of 2021-22, keeping in view the difficulties of the students due to the spread of COVID-19, CBSE had introduced a bifurcated exam form, consisting of two exams, Term-1 and Term-2.
However, some schools had expressed their difficulties in scheduling two exams per year. And now, the CBSE has taken the decision to revert to one exam per year again. “CBSE never announced that the two-term exam format will be continued henceforth. It was a one-time formula. Now that schools are functioning in full capacity, the decision, for now, is to stick to the one-time exam format,” a CBSE official said.
The syllabus for the exam will remain the same, with the previously introduced reduction to thirty per cent. “The NCERT will send us the details of rationalisation based on which an announcement will be made. Schools can teach the reduced syllabus using the existing books,” the official had stated. The one exam per year pattern will be applicable in all 26,152 schools affiliated to the CBSE.
For the current year, the admit cards and timetable for the Classes X and XII Board exams have already been released by CBSE on April 14. The exams for both classes will begin on April 26, 2022, and will end on May 24 for Class X and on June 15, 2022 for Class XII. The Term-2 exam will consist of short-answer essay-type questions. The Term-1 exam has already been conducted in 2021 for both classes.
According to the NEP, students are allowed to take the Board exam twice, one extra time for improvement. The CUET (Common University Entrance Test), which has been adopted by the central universities for admission in undergraduate programmes, will also not affect the pattern of the Board exams for Class XII.
