Provision of additional time in the Public Examinations

The CBSE Board has been taking several initiatives to bring down the level of stress among the students both during the process of learning as well as during their participation in the public examinations conducted by the CBSE Board. It is often seen that the students enter the examination hall with a certain amount of stress and on receipt of the question paper they start answering the questions in their answer books immediately, sometimes without adequate planning of the content, format and style of their writing, often times without adequate application of mind. In many cases, a fear of paucity of time forces them to relentlessly engage themselves in writing the answers without sufficient reflection.

The CBSE Board has been contemplating on the above issue and has, therefore, decided that the students appearing in the examinations of the CBSE Board be given an additional time of 1-5 minutes before they start writing their answers. This time would exclusively be given for reading and understanding the question paper and shall not be available for writing the answers. It really means that the question papers would be distributed to the candidates at 10.15 a.m. The candidates will start answering the question paper from 10.30 a.m. Therefore, all candidates appearing in the examination would be required to be present before the issue of the question papers in the examination hall. Detailed instructions in this regard would be sent to all afffiliated schools along with the schedule of examinations.

It may be advisable if the schools extend similar facility to the students appearing in the school examinations also so that they are trained to study, plan and develop mental strategies for answering the questions in the examinations without stress.