Board exams of CBSE next year will be held after February in the offline mode, said Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank at a live interaction with teachers.

When will the dates for the board exams be announced? Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said the dates for the exam will be announced later after assessing the situation.

This has managed to provide clarity to students and their parents, says S. Mohanaratnam, a teacher for 12th standard.

There is a good deal of confusion among the students and parents with regards to board exams of CBSE for 10th and 12th.

Board exams of CBSE: Great 2021 exams after February?

All that happened on the academic front in this country this year has brought confusion upon students and parents.

Not only exams, but also admissions and classes never managed to begin on time during 2020.

As classes and admissions went on late this year, students and parents began wondering whether board exams of CBSE would be held on time or not.

Speculation also began doing rounds that board exams of CBSE are to be conducted in and around February or March next year only to add confusion.

Union Education Minister stepped into action to bring in clarity.

Interacting with students and parents at a webinar held in the recent past, Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said dates in connection with the exams would be decided after meeting with all stake holders.

He further said students would get more number of days in between, board exam of CBSE in connection with 10th and 12th standard.

That is not all, even the syllabus has been brought down by 30 percent. This could make the preparation for board exams of CBSE less cumbersome, say many parents.

Post the interaction with students, Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank interacted with teachers.

However, Union Education Minister stressed that board exams of CBSE would be conducted offline.

Speaking on this further, Minister said, still certain percentage of students did not have access to stable internet connection and gadgets like laptops or computers.

With this being the situation, conducting exams in offline will be a fine thing to do, said Union Minister.

It is interesting to note that Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is said to be planning to introduce application based questions in connection with class 12 board exams of CBSE.

Sources from CBSE said there will be case study based questions in class 12 board exams of CBSE where students will read a paragraph and answer questions.

Doing this will test the reading, understanding, interpretation and answer writing abilities of the student.

These type of questions were restricted to one-mark questions, now the same may be a part of short or longer answer questions.

A sample paper is also said to have been released based on the new format.

The motive behind this is said to be making board exams of CBSE competency based.

The syllabus for board exams of CBSE has been reduced, so what impact will this have on JEE Mains 2021? The number of questions to be anwered in the exam are likely to come down.

Which means, while JEE Mains 2021 will have 90 questions comprising 30 each from maths, physics and chemistry, students need to answer 75 questions (25 from each subject instead of actual 30) from those three.

Another point worth noting with regards to board exams of CBSE in 2021 is that they are likely to have 33 percent internal choice.

Speaking more about board exams of CBSE for 2021, Union Minister for Education said cancelling the board exams may not have good things in store for students.

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This may form a not-so-good impression on the students and as time moves ahead they may find it difficult to get seats in higher education institutions or even jobs too.

When will the board exams of CBSE be held in 2021? Exams will not be conducted in January or February next year, however, dates will be announced after extensive consultation with stakeholders.

Among the teachers who interacted, couple of them have suggested to cancel board exams of CBSE, few others have asked to conduct exams online.

Among the teachers who are happy with the decision to postpone the board exams of CBSE next year is K. Ramanathan. Students should get more time to prepare for the exams, this decision to postpone has given them that.

However, Ramanthan’s colleague S. Krishnamurthy who teaches Chemistry quickly hurries to put out a word of caution.

The postponement of exams does not mean, the exams are not going to be conducted.

The duration of postponement must not be long, else students may get into an impression that there is still some more time for exams and then stop studying, he says.

It is not only board exams of CBSE of next year that are postponed. Union Minister of Education further said the practical exams will also not be conducted in January and February next year.

Teachers, students and parents hope clarity would prevail and things would begin to move in the right direction as time moves ahead.

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S. Vishnu Sharma

S Vishnu Sharmaa now works with collegechalo.com in the news team. His work involves writing articles related to the education... (Full bio)