CBSE approves open-book exams for Class 9 from 2026-27: Report
The Central Board of Secondary Training (CBSE) has authorized a proposal to introduce open-book assessments for Class 9 closing exams from the 2026-27 tutorial session after a pilot examine, Indian Categorical reported.
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As per the report, the CBSE’s governing physique authorized the proposal for open ebook exams after a gathering held in June.
The report additional said that the proposal, according to the Nationwide Curriculum Framework for College Training (NCFSC) 2023 and the Nationwide Training Coverage (NEP) 2020, entails open-book assessments for Class 9 overlaying topics like language, arithmetic, science and social science.
The proposal for open ebook evaluation was mentioned in the course of the curriculum committee assembly of CBSE in November 2023 and was authorized final yr.
As per the proposal, a pilot run of open-book checks was to be performed at choose colleges for English, Arithmetic, and Science for Lessons 9 and 10 and English, Arithmetic, and Biology for Lessons 11 and 12. This was to gauge the stakeholders’ response and the time taken by the scholars to finish such checks.
“The plan to hold out an OBE pilot in some colleges was mentioned as part of the NCF suggestions. It could possibly be utilized in inside exams to advertise revolutionary considering amongst college students. Nonetheless, it’s only in an ideation section, and there’s no plan to undertake the OBE format within the CBSE class 10 and 12 board examination,” a senior CBSE official informed Hindustan Occasions final yr.
The Indian Categorical report said that there are challenges in conducting open-book examinations, akin to low success charges revealed within the pilot examine, however lecturers expressed optimism concerning the system as a consequence of its potential for fostering vital considering. CBSE plans to develop standardised pattern papers to make sure the standard of questions.
The board will create a framework for open-book inside exams for Class 9 and it’s unlikely to be obligatory for colleges, the Indian Categorical report mentioned, citing an unnamed supply.
This isn’t the primary time the central board has experimented with open-book examinations. The board had launched Open Textual content-Based mostly Evaluation (OTBA) for the exams of Lessons 9 and 11 from 2014-15 to 2016-17. Again then, responses from the coed group and academicians have been damaging.
What’s an open-book examination?
Not like conventional exams, open-book checks contain college students getting access to textbooks and different related assets to reply questions. These exams normally comprise conceptual and analytical questions that require college students to learn, interpret, and apply the idea.
Open-book exams are geared toward testing the higher-order considering expertise of scholars by stepping away from the common mode of exams, permitting them to maneuver away from rote studying to cross a take a look at.
