CBSE date sheet out on Oct 18, students from over 2,000 Delhi schools to take first term board exams

Delhi has 2,188 schools affiliated to CBSE. Lakhs of students from these schools, which include government schools in the city, will sit for the first term exams in December. This is the first time since March 2020 that so many students will sit for physical exams across schools.

To optimise the examination schedule and wrap up the exam in fewer days, the board communicated to schools on Thursday that it has decided to divide the subjects for both classes X and XII into major subjects—offered by almost all the affiliated schools—and minor subjects—offered by fewer schools.

The major subjects will follow a common fixed exam schedule like usual years after the minor subject exams are completed. The board has created groups of schools that offer particular minor subjects and will create separate time tables for these, such that different schools might be conducting different exams on a given day.

This has been done because the board is offering 114 subjects in class XII and 75 subjects in class X and has estimated that following the earlier system of a common schedule for all schools will result in the exams taking up at least 45 days.

Since the exams are being conducted in the middle of the academic year, the board is trying to “avoid learning loss”.
There are 19 major subjects for class XII and 9 major subjects for class X. The reading time for the exams have been increased from 15 minutes to 20 minutes.

The second term examination is scheduled for March-April 2022. Students will not be considered ‘pass’, ‘compartment’ or ‘essential repeat’ after the first term exam as their final result will only be declared after the second term exam.