NEW DELHI:  Lakhs of Class 10 and 12 students, who are set to write Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Board examinations in the coming weeks, have a good reason to breathe easy.The exams begin on February 15 for minor subjects and the core subjects start from March 2. Nearly 33 per cent questions in every paper coming up will have a choice. Effectively, it means that if a paper has 10 questions that students are required to answer, there will be 13 questions in the paper, allowing students to choose the ones they are comfortable answering.

“Earlier, this choice used to be in only about 10 per cent questions on an average but the move this year is to make the examination more student-friendly and lessen stress levels,” said CBSE secretary Anurag Tripathy. “This option will be there in less-opted, as well as major papers for both secondary and senior secondary levels.” About 18 lakh students are set to appear in for the Class 10 board exam while 13 lakh students have registered for the class 12 exams. 

In another departure from convention, students who write creative answers, instead of patterned answers learnt from textbooks, using their imagination and relevant information are also likely to score better during the evaluation of the answer sheet.

Sanyam Bharadwaj, CBSE Controller of Examinations said this is a bid to encourage competence. 
“Nearly 1 lakh of our evaluators are being sensitised and trained about this so that students who think differently are at no disadvantage at all and are rewarded...” he added.

Tightened measures
In the wake of last year’s question paper leak that marred last year’s examinations and raised questions of the board’s credibility, several enhanced security measures-such as geo-tagging questions papers shipments have been adopted this year. The board had even planned to use digital papers