CBSE board exams twice a year most likely from 2025-26: Report

The Ministry of Education has hinted that the CBSE biannual board exams might start from academic session 2025-26. The biannual board exams will be conducted to reduce stress and provide more opportunities to students, news agency PTI reported quoting sources. There is no immediate plan for a semester system.

The ministry and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will hold consultations with school principals next month for conducting board exams twice a year, the sources told news agency PTI.

The focus would remain on exploring the feasibility of biannual board exams as sources said that the education ministry has asked the CBSE to work out logistics for conducting board exams twice a year.

The ministry's initial plan was to introduce biannual board exams from the 2024-25 academic session, however, it has been pushed back by a year.

"The ministry has asked the CBSE to work on the logistics of how will board exams be conducted twice a year. The board is working out the modalities and a consultation will be organised next month with school principals," a source said.

"The idea being explored is to conduct two editions of the board exams at the end of the year from the 2025-26 academic session but the modalities still need to be worked out. However, there is no plan to implement the semester system," the source added.

The new national curriculum framework (NCF), prepared by the Union government-appointed national steering company which was led by former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, proposed a semester system for students of classes 11 and 12.

The framework, which was released by the ministry in August last year, also proposed that the students be given the option to write their board exams twice a year.

"The CBSE right now is brainstorming on the schedule so students can get maximum benefit and the goal of making board exams stress-free can be achieved. However, logistics is a challenge which needs to be addressed, conducting exams is tiresome so the plan has to be flawless," the source said.