Board Exams Likely For CBSE Class 10 Students From Next Session: Minister

Jaipur: Around 2.5 crore children studying under the Central Board of Secondary Education or CBSE, may have to sit for board exams in Class 10, said Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javdekar today. As of now, Class 10 boards are optional in the CBSE.

"We will implement it from the 2017-2018 session. Not this year or in the next two months. The final decisions will be announced soon, it is under final consideration," Mr Javadekar said.

In view of the increasing number of suicides by students, the minister also said the government will provide free online coaching to IIT aspirants.

The planned portal, which will be launched soon, will be called "IIT PAL", the minister said. It will have lectures, material, tutorials, discussion forums and fortnightly tests. "Before the actual Joint Entrance Examination, it will have three four mock exams," Mr Javadekar said. Proficient teachers are being roped in to put together the course material.

"This is my answer to the high costs of coaching and the spate of suicides reported from IIT prep students," said the minister.

Speaking of the parents and teachers, who are concerned that there were no exams for children from Classes 1 to 7, he said to remedy this, the government will introduce an evaluation process involving learning benchmarks to assess if a child's performance is up to the mark or not.