Earlier in June, the government of India announced cancellation of class 12 exams by two national school assessment boards - Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for the Indian School Certificate (CICSE) in view of the looming covid situation and safety of children.  Both boards were advised to develop an objective evaluation criteria as an alternative to the written assessment.

CBSE has now formulated a 40:30:30 weightage formula based on Class 12, Class 11 and Class 10 results respectively.  For class 12, marks available in unit test/mid-term/pre-board exams will be considered.  Moderation of marks will be carried out at school level, and to prevent any bias, past school performance will be used as a reference. Students unsatisfied with their marks will be given an opportunity to write exams which the board will hold when conditions are conducive.

CISCE’s assessment criteria is on similar lines with some variation.  In addition to these two national assessment boards, all the state level school assessment board exams have been cancelled impacting nearly 14 million students in total.  Whilst the assessment criteria cannot be made uniform given the autonomy and independent features of each of the boards in the country, the timeline for results however have been made common this year, requiring all results to be declared by 31 July.

British Council comments:  Students mostly from CBSE and CISCE boards chose to study abroad given the nature of school curriculum, counsellor network and socio-economic backgrounds of students.  As the alternative assessment criteria has been made public, the UK higher education institutions may want to consider the options and assess if the said criteria fulfils the admissions requirement.   

If you have any questions please write to Aatreyee.GuhaThakurta@britishcouncil.org  

Read more at:

https://www.india.com/education/state-board-exams-2021-heres-what-supreme-court-said-on-class-12th-results-assessment-criteria-4764263/  

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/class-12-exam-results-cannot-direct-uniform-scheme-for-assessment-in-all-states-says-sc-11624515458909.html