CBSE issues new guidelines to conduct practical exams

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 11

To ensure well-ordered and impartial conduct of practical examinations and internal assessments of upcoming board examinations, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a fresh set of guidelines, mandatory to be followed by all CBSE-affiliated schools.

For the first time, ‘geo-tagged and time-tagged concepts are introduced by the board. In a circular issued on November 4, Sanyam Bhardwaj, Controller of Examination, has asked all external examiners, internal examiners and observers to upload their photographs from their examination centres to confirm that they have conducted practical examinations. For maintaining transparency, the observers have to ensure that the photograph was clicked in a laboratory where the practical exams are being held. Some other information such as batch number, total batch, date and time would also be required to be uploaded on the link. The inbuilt software in an app link will ensure about the photograph uploaded and time tagged.

All schools are likely to conduct the practical examinations and project assessments from January 1 to February 7, 2020. Hence, school heads have been directed to conduct the examinations in the supervision of an observer, who will be appointed by board officials only. Besides, there will be an external examiner and an internal examiner.

In addition, the schools will again ascertain that practicals are conducted by the external examiners appointed by the CBSE only. Subsequently, an official app link will be provided to the schools for uploading one group photograph of observer and both external and internal examiners.

The evaluation in the practical examinations remain questionable every year, therefore, the circular further directed that the practical/project marks would have to be uploaded in the link provided by the board immediately after completion of the exams and on the same date. No correction of marks will be allowed. Once the marks are uploaded, no changes in any activity will be accepted.

District CBSE coordinator KS Randhawa said: “Geo and time-tagging initiative taken by the board officials was appreciative as in many schools, it was observed that practicals were conducted without any laboratory and schools located in rural areas, marks were allotted to students without appearing for the practical examinations. Hence, it will bring more transparency in conducting the examinations.”