The Coronavirus pandemic brought the world to an unimaginable lifestyle of work from home, studying from home and social distancing. Things like “complete digitalisation” were only talked about before the pandemic but had to be implemented thereafter.
Schools had to be shut down, and online classes and exams had to be conducted to avoid hampering the education of the budding youth.
However, the pandemic took a hard-hitting emotional and mental toll on people across the world, including children and teachers. Teaching for long hours, studying for a vast syllabus and writing detailed assignments is a difficult task when you’re fighting a deadly virus, or have to witness a loved one doing so.
In addition to that, it was getting difficult for teachers and students to cover a vast curriculum online while combating issues like power cuts, connectivity issues and minor disturbances in their homely environment.
In lieu of the same, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) decided to reduce and revise the CBSE curriculum for the upcoming batch of 2021-22. They changed the examination patterns to aid the affiliated secondary institutions as well as the students of class 10 in taking the board exams according to any situation the world may face in the future with the Coronavirus pandemic.
Here is a detailed description of the revised CBSE curriculum for class 10, for the batch of 2021-22.
CBSE Curriculum for Class 10 Students
To solve the issues occurring in the “schooling from home” model, CBSE came up with a lucrative solution for the students of class IX-X. They decided to hold two board exams, divided into two terms of the academic session, with a curriculum split in the middle between the two terms.
The first board exam for the initial term was planned to comprise of MCQs (multiple choice questions) for all subjects whereas the long question-answer subjective papers in different formats are planned for the second term.
To provide support to online education, and give a backbone to the curriculum and enhance learning, the students will be continuously evaluated throughout the academic session, with various research projects, unit tests and other activities.
This scheme is meant to provide ease of learning to students and stress-free teaching and grading for teachers during these tumultuous times.
The first set of exams of a 90 minutes duration (1 hour 30 minutes), was held in the months of November and December 2021.
Whereas, the second set of exams will be of a fixed duration of 2 hours, and are planned to be held in the months of March and April 2022.
The overall result for the academic session will be decided using the combined scores of the term exams, along with the marks obtained from the continuous evaluation through assignments, and projects.
All CBSE schools, including the CBSE schools in Dubai, will be sending the question papers along with their marking schemes in record time. The exams will be proctored under external examiners appointed by the board. They will be responsible for sending the results to the CBSE board after the examinations. The students of all CBSE schools in Dubai will be allotted examination centres near the due date of the commencement of the term exams.
Although the board has planned the exams to be offline for the time being, they are subject to change from subjective to objective MCQ exams as per the status of the pandemic.
CBSE Class 10 Syllabus for 2021-22
Since the class 10 board exam question paper was prepared as per the CBSE curriculum, the board had published the syllabus for all subjects of the curriculum beforehand so that the students could start preparing for the first term examinations.
Students can not only find the syllabus for theory subjects, but also for the practical on the online CBSE portals. The CBSE curriculum was released to give the students ample time to analyse the syllabus, get to know the topics and study the concepts in depth during their preparation.
CBSE had provided subject wise links to their syllabuses for ease of access, and to avoid too much online traffic on one website.
The CBSE curriculum was made available online to give the students an overview of the topics before they started studying for the exams. It is understood that the class 10 exams are a turning point in every student’s academic life. It decides the course of their careers, their interests and a percentage of their future trajectory.
Class 10 curriculum also builds a concrete knowledge of the child in every subject, giving him a short overview, and basic concepts of the subjects before choosing his stream for further studies.
Basis of the CBSE Curriculum 2021-22
The curriculum of the CBSE schools including the ones in Dubai was designed to guide students towards moral values, and the path of life-long learning. It also helped the little learners to realise and channelise their true potential, and encourage them to keep enhancing their skills.
The curriculum also plays a significant role in providing the students of CBSE with a good knowledge of technology, society, and other necessary topics so as to make them better citizens of the world.
It promotes health, the importance of fitness and extracurricular activities in a student’s all-round development.
Examination Scheme and Declaration of CBSE Result
The CBSE board had come up with many options for conducting the board exams and concluding the results, against several Covid-19 situations. They had added this to the curriculum to inform the students and parents about the circumstances under which the different ways of exams will be held.
1. In case of the betterment of the pandemic situation across all CBSE affiliated schools in the world, both the first term and second term exams will be held at the allotted centres, and offline.
With regard to this, the theory marks will be divided equally between both exams, and the results will be concluded accordingly.
2. If the pandemic worsens before/ during the first term exams and due to this the schools are closed in November and December, the exams are supposed to be held online, for the schools of the affected regions.
Students have been provided with an option to write the exams online or submit hand-written sheets via school portals.
It was added that if the Term II exams are held at the centres, then the second set of exams will be given more weightage in the final result as compared to the first set of exams.
3. If the first set of exams are held from the examination centres, but the second set is held online due to the prevailing pandemic, the final result will be a combination of the score in Term-I MCQ exams and the internal assessments that the students have been submitting from the start of the session.
4. To maintain the validity and reliability of the assessments and create an honest score for each student, when both sets of exams are held online, the results will be concluded using the performance of students in the internal assessments and practical exams. The result will also include some percentage of the theory marks of both term exams that the students will be sitting for online from their homes.
Conclusion
The CBSE board is trying its best to help the students score satisfactory marks in the boards, and not let the Covid-19 pandemic affect their performance in the exams.
With the revised CBSE curriculum for 2021-22, they have gone out of the way to overcome any obstacle that may come in between the students and their examinations.
The curriculum provides flexibility, breaking down concepts that are easy to understand and hugely help in building the academic foundation in the student’s life as well as ease the child of the burden of giving exams during the pandemic.
The CBSE curriculum is available online, and can be downloaded from the official website of CBSE, for you to start diving into the interactive and all-inclusive study material of CBSE now!
