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The Board exams are possibly the single most important and stressful event in any Indian household. Every household in the country spends a lot of the morning re-revising concepts they had already revised, around parents who are praying to the Gods to help their children. Even school teachers and principals are hoping for their students to perform well in the exams.
This hullabaloo is carried by the fear that the students only have one chance at taking the exams. They have to give their best effort, because the only other option they have is to redo the exam. This is not really an option for anybody.
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A New Path
But this may not be the case for students taking the board exams, starting from 2026.
The CBSE has recently approved a biannual examination cycle for Class 10 students beginning in the 2025–26 academic year. All candidates will sit a mandatory first phase in February, with results published in April. Students can then choose to retake up to three subjects in an optional second phase in May. They will receive the results for these exams in June.
This reform follows the National Education Policy 2020’s recommendation for flexible assessments designed to reduce high‑stakes pressure.
Reaction among school leaders has been mixed. Many principals noted that providing the second attempt can help with the stress associated with the board exams. And that it will help students get the grades they deserve. Other voices in the education space highlighted the challenges involved. Conducting two-phase board exams will heavily strain the invigilators, teachers, supervisors, and score collectors. It will also disrupt the academic calendars schools already use.
School administrators now have to revisit their curriculum pacing. Teachers now have to introduce core concepts early in the year, need to revise the study periods for students, and also keep their teaching balanced so that students don’t face burnouts.
This change may help students relieve some stress when preparing for the exams, but now add more pressure to teachers.
This change also brings thought of other possible changes that could have been made. One can only wonder why the only possible solution implemented here was to add an optional set of exams?
While exams are still seen as the best method of determining student learning in India, education boards all over the world are completely moving away from them. Finland, for example, has banned exams completely until the age of 16. Students in Finland are assessed by teachers based on their class participation, how they work on their homework, and finally through challenging project-based learning that combines school learning with real-world stakes. Schools only allow for optional exams at the end of their high school years.
A Boon, or a Curse?
Other countries in Scandinavia, like Sweden and Norway also have a similar approach, choosing to focus on actual learning rather than grades and percentages. While they do have exams, these exams are not the final judge on how well students are learning.
The result of this is that Scandinavian students are preparing not to take exams, but to learn, and use their learning in the real world. No engineer will ever have to take an exam to solve a problem, but they will have to use what they learnt in actually solving problems around them.
Finally, how is it that these countries are overhauling their education systems to move away from exam-based preparation, and using project-based learning, while we still rely on exams to decide a student’s future? How can we implement project-based learning, which clearly seems to be effective, in a way that positively affects both students and teachers?
What do you think is the best way forward?
