UAE school principals welcome CBSE’s special assessment scheme for 2022

Dubai - It was a welcome decision, they said, stressing that it will ensure the consistency of students’ performance.

Grade 10 and Grade 12 students sitting for the next CBSE exams will now have their first-term tests from November to December this year, while those for the second term will be scheduled from March to April next year, it was announced on Monday.

UAE principals on Monday confirmed receiving the circular about the special assessment scheme from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). It was a welcome decision, they said, stressing that it will ensure the consistency of students’ performance.

With the new CBSE assessment scheme for the 2021-2022 school year, the academic session will be divided into two terms, covering 50 per cent of the syllabus in each term. According to the circular sent to principals, the board said the decision was taken bearing in mind the Covid-19 situation and its repercussions.

Arogya Reddy, principal of Ambassador School Sharjah, said: “This is being done to ensure the consistency of performance among students. The board feels that they need to look into how a student has been performing throughout the year. It’s similar to the CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) pattern that was implemented up to Grade 10, starting from 2009 to 2017. Thus, the board will conduct exams at the end of each term on the basis of the bifurcated syllabus.”

This school year, Grade 10 CBSE students were auto-promoted and the evaluation criteria were culled out to assess the students. Grade 12 board exams were not held this year, too. Instead, the 30:30:40 formula was adopted, with results expected by July 31.

Explaining how the special scheme will work, Muhammad Ali Kottakkulam, principal of Gulf Indian High School Dubai, said: “The curriculum will be rationalised as done last year and be divided into two terms, with the board organising end-of-term exams from the syllabus area rationalised for the term concerned.

“The first term exams will be a 90-minute MCQ type exam using OMR sheets, conducted in November-December, with board-prepared question papers...The year-end exam will be of two-hour duration, held in March-April with questions in different formats — case-based, situation-based, open-ended, short-answer and long-answer types — exclusively from the second term syllabus. These exams will be supplemented by internal assessments using different tools, distributed throughout the academic year.”

With the initiative, the CBSE tries to ensure that “the assessment of students will be least affected by pandemics in the future and will be as valid and reliable as possible”.

nandini@khaleejtimes.com