The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Friday announced a blended assessment method for Class XII students in West Asia.
This comes after students sat for selected papers between February 17 and 28, following which CBSE on March 15 canceled the remaining Class 12 board exams, including papers that had previously been postponed in several West Asian countries amid the ongoing conflict between Iran, the US and Israel.
Schools have been directed to upload marks on the CBSE portal between April 6 and April 13. “Once uploaded, the same will not change,” Sanyam Bhardwaj, controller of CBSE examination, said in a notification, adding that this is to ensure that the results are declared timely with other Class 12 students.
The board will announce the results of nearly 23,000 Class XII students in over 200 CBSE schools in seven West Asian countries using a formula-based assessment that combines actual exam performance and school-based assessment.
Explaining the methodology of board exam results, CBSE said in a notification dated March 27: “In the subjects where the exams were conducted, the actual performance in the exam may be taken into consideration while declaring the results.” For the remaining subjects, grades will be extracted from school assessments, including “the best three grades obtained in the semester, semi-annual and preliminary examinations.”
For subjects with theory components of 80 or 70 marks, the board said schools will upload the “best three marks” from periodic examinations, while for subjects with 60, 50 or 30 marks, “performance in the final preliminary examination” will be considered.
She added that the internal assessment and practical components, described as a “year-long exercise”, would remain unchanged, as grades had already been submitted by schools.
For subjects with low theoretical weight – 60, 50 or 30 marks – the council said that final exam grades will be used before the council. In cases where a student is absent, pre-board grades may be taken into consideration.
The council explained that the internal assessment and practical components, described as a “year-long exercise”, will remain unchanged, as “students’ performance has already been uploaded by schools”.
Students who manage to appear in all registered subjects will have their results declared based on their performance in the written examinations, CBSE said. Those who have transferred centers to other countries, including India, will also be assessed on the basis of their actual examination scores.
CBSE said the approach was designed to ensure “valid, reliable, fair and unbiased results” in view of the prevailing situation that has led to disruption of examinations across the region and that “the decision of the competent authority of the board will be final and binding”, indicating that no changes will be allowed after submission.
From February 17 to 28, the council conducted exams in 17 academic subjects such as physics, accounting, geography and chemistry, along with 10 skill-based subjects.
The council had canceled exams scheduled between March 1 and April 10 in seven countries in West Asia, including the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia, citing “the prevailing exceptional circumstances” that made it difficult to hold the exams. It added that “any results obtained through approximation methods cannot exactly match those resulting from the actual examination,” but that it would remain committed to “fairness, reliability, correctness, impartiality and transparency.”
CBSE, on March 18, announced a special assessment scheme for Class 10 students in West Asia, under which marks will be calculated from the papers already obtained by the student, applying the averages of the best-performing subjects missed in the exams.
