West Asia war: CBSE rolls out hybrid evaluation for cancelled class 12 exams

THe exchange room of Secondary training (CBSE) on fri proclaimed a hybrid assessment method for Class 12 students in West Asia.This comes after the students sat for select papers between February 17 and 28, following which the CBSE on March 15 cancelled the remaining Class 12 board examinations, including papers earlier postponed in several West Asian countries amid the ongoing Iran–US–Israel conflict.Schools have been directed to upload the marks on the CBSE portal between April 6 and April 13. “Once uploaded, the same will not be changed,” CBSE exam controller Sanyam Bhardwaj said in a notification, adding that this is to ensure timely declaration of results along with other Class 12 students.The board will declare results of nearly 23,000 Class 12 students in over 200 CBSE-affiliated schools across seven West Asian countries using a formula-based evaluation that combines actual exam performance with school-based assessment.Explaining the methodology for board exam results, CBSE in a notification dated March 27 said that “in subjects where examinations have been conducted, actual performance in the examination may be taken into account for declaration of results.” For the remaining subjects, marks will be derived from school assessments, including the “best of the three marks obtained in quarterly, half-yearly and pre-board examinations.”For subjects with theory components of 80 or 70 marks, the board said schools will upload the “best of three” scores from periodic tests, while for subjects with 60, 50 or 30 marks, “performance in the final pre-board examination” will be considered.It added that internal assessment and practical components, described as “a yearlong exercise,” will remain unchanged, as the marks have already been submitted by schools.For subjects with lower theory weightage—60, 50 or 30 marks—the board said the final pre-board examination scores will be used. In cases where a student was absent, earlier pre-board scores may be considered.The board clarified that internal assessment and practical components, described as “a yearlong exercise,” will remain unchanged, as “performance of the students have already been uploaded by the schools.”Students who were able to appear in all their registered subjects will have their results declared based entirely on their written examination performance, CBSE said. Those who shifted centres to other countries, including India, will also be assessed on the basis of their actual exam scores.The CBSE said the approach has been designed to ensure “valid, reliable, fair, and unbiased results” in view of the prevailing situation that led to the disruption of exams across the region and that the “decision of the Competent Authority of the Board shall be final and bounding,” indicating that no changes will be permitted after submission.Between February 17 and 28, the board conducted exams of 17 academic subjects such as Physics, Accountancy, Geography and Chemistry, along with 10 skill-based subjects.The board had cancelled exams scheduled between March 1 and April 10 across seven West Asian countries, including the UAE, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, citing “prevailing extraordinary circumstances” that made it difficult to conduct exams. It added that “any results derived through approximation methods cannot fully match those produced from an actual examination,” but would still adhere to “fairness, reliability, validity, impartiality, and transparency.”The CBSE had, on March 18, announced a special assessment scheme for Class 10 students in West Asia, according to which marks will be calculated from the papers a student has already taken, applying averages of best-performing subjects where exams were missed.