NEW DELHI: India’s largest educational board, Central Board of Secondary Education, in a first, is all set to prepare question banks for all subjects for classes IX-XII starting this year. The questions will also be used in class X and XII board examinations next year, authorities said.“We have already alerted schools to send questions that can work as input for creating banks for each subject and are expecting responses soon,” CBSE secretary Anurag Tripathy said. “Inputs from teachers and students will also be sought in the process.”
The idea behind creating such banks is to shift the focus from rote learning to experiential learning, said Tripathy. “We will first make the banks in major subjects and then it will be adopted for all subjects,” he said and added that this will happen in phases.
Officials also said that the aim of the move was to introduce different kinds of examination systems in the country on the lines of education boards in Finland, Japan and Germany — the countries that were studied for the initiative.
“The board has decided to prepare a curated and user-friendly question bank on an IT platform that will not only be useful for students to enhance their learning process but also to teachers for incorporating in their pedagogy and assessments,” a circular sent by the CBSE to nearly 22,000 of its affiliated schools read.Currently, the board sets up panels of subject experts every year to prepare questions for its examinations. “The banks will still be vetted by subject experts...,” another CBSE official said.
Overhauling the existing system
The CBSE has introduced a plethora of changes, including giving more choices in question paper and rewarding creative answers during the evaluation process to usher in reforms in the examination system. Officials also said that the aim of the move was to introduce different kinds of examination systems in the country