NCF aims to reduce stress on students by holding board exams twice a year

The two board exam system is set to be back with the Education Ministry announcing final exams will be held twice-a-year to give students both “time and opportunity”. They can take it when they feel ready, it said.

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.

This will enable the move towards a system of on demand examinations in the near future as envisioned in the NEP, it added.

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 read.

Instead, board exams should assess the achievement of competencies stated in the curriculum and provide a “valid and reliable picture of student performance”, it added.

The NCF states that board will be responsible for designing and implementing a fair and reliable testing process and methods to assess achievements of competencies.

The framework also suggests that in Class 11 and 12, students will have to study two languages and one of them has to be an Indian language.

The choice of subjects in classes 11 and 12 will not be restricted to streams such as Arts, Science and Commerce to get flexibility to choose, it added.