CBSE Class 10, 12 exams cancelled; Supreme Court okays new assessment plan

The Supreme Court on Friday accepted the bid offered by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to cancel the exams for students of Class 10 and 12, in view of the raging coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak. Instead, a new assessment scheme has been proposed where these students will be evaluated on the average of their best performances in papers they have already appeared for earlier.

The new assessment scheme is available on the official website, said Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CBSE, on Friday. The Class 10 and 12 exams were originally scheduled to be held between July 1 and 15.

According to the new scheme proposed by the CBSE, students of Class 10 and 12, who have already appeared in examinations in more than three subjects, will be assessed after taking the average of the marks obtained in their three best-performing subjects. This will be taken to evaluate their scores for the cancelled papers. If the students have appeared in only three exams so far, the average of the best two subjects would be taken as their scores in the cancelled papers.

However, the CBSE said that there are very few students of Class 12, mainly from Delhi, who have appeared in the examinations in only one or two subjects.

While for students of Class 10, the re-evaluated marks will be final, students of Class 12 will be allowed to appear for "optional examinations" conducted by the CBSE in the future for the papers that were cancelled. If the students want, they can appear for these exams if they desire to do so and improve their performances.

The Indian School Certificate Exams (ICSE), which also holds Class 10 and Class 12 exams, was represented at the Supreme Court by senior advocate Jaideep Gupta. The ICSE exams will have a "slightly different" assessment scheme from that of CBSE and the rules would be available on its website within a week, the advocate submitted.

The ICSE exams were scheduled to be held between July 1 and 14.

However, Class 10 ICSE students may also have the option of appearing in future examinations to improve their scores.

"We make it clear that this order does not deal with any other issue which may arise for consideration in some other proceedings pending before the High court or this Court except the subject matter of conducting examinations for classes 10 and 12 for Academic Year 2019-2020 by the CBSE and ICSE respectively," concluded the Supreme Court in its order.