The Ministry of Education has announced that board exams will now be conducted twice a year and students will be allowed to retain best score. The Ministry has said that the new curriculum framework has been designed in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and textbooks are being developed for 2024 academic session.
In the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for School Education, 2023, NCERT said that this will be made possible by creating a “comprehensive test item bank” which can be used to create tests using suitable software.
On the current system of boards, NCF says that with one exam in a year, students do not have the chance to take it when they are ready, or a second chance to clear it if they miss the first opportunity.
About current challenges of board exams, the NCF states that it only focus on the “capacity of students to reproduce learnt facts” which is not what exams are meant for.
“Given that most examinations largely test rote memory, a very narrow range of Competencies are assessed. This gives an incomplete (at best) or incorrect (at worst) picture of student learning,” the NCF reads.
