The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is a national level board of education in India for public and private schools, controlled and managed by the Government of India. Established in 1929 by a resolution of the government, the Board was an experiment towards inter-state integration and cooperation in the sphere of secondary education. There are more than 27,000 schools in India and 240 schools in 28 foreign countries affiliated to the CBSE. All schools affiliated to CBSE follow the NCERT curriculum especially from class 9 to 12. The current Chairperson of CBSE is Rahul Singh, IAS.[3]
The constitution of the Board was amended in 1952 to give its present name, the Central Board of Secondary Education. The Board was reconstituted on 1 July 1962 so as to make its services available to students and various educational institutions in the entire country.[4]
The first education board to be set up in India was the Uttar Pradesh Board of High School and Intermediate Education in 1921, which was under jurisdiction of Rajputana, Central India and Gwalior. In 1929, the government of India set up a joint Board named Board of High School and Intermediate Education. This included Ajmer, Merwara, Central India, and Gwalior. Later it was confined to Ajmer, Bhopal and Vindhya Pradesh. In 1952, it became the Central Board of Secondary Education.[5]
CBSE offers academic subjects in 40 different languages, which are Arabic, Assamese, Bahasa Melayu, Bengali, Bhutia, Bodo, English, French, German, Gujarati, Gurung, Hindi Course-A, Hindi Course-B, Japanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Lepcha, Limboo, Malayalam, Meitei (Manipuri), Marathi, Mizo, Nepali, Odia, Persian, Punjabi, Rai, Russian, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Spanish, Sherpa, Tamang, Tamil, Tangkhul, Telugu AP, Telugu Telangana, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu Course A and Urdu Course B.[6]
CBSE affiliates all Kendriya Vidyalayas, all Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, private schools, and most of the schools approved by central government of India.All State Government schools in Delhi are affiliated with CBSE. There are 1,138 Kendriya Vidyalayas, 3,011 Government Schools, 16,741 Independent Schools, 595 Jawahar Novodaya Vidyalayas and 14 Central Tibetan Schools.[7]
CBSE conducts the final examinations for Class 10 and Class 12 every year in the month of February and March. The results are announced by the end of May.[8] The board earlier conducted the AIEEE Examination for admission to undergraduate courses in engineering and architecture in colleges across India, however the AIEEE exam was merged with the IIT-Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) in 2013. The common examination is now called JEE (Main) and is henceforth conducted by National Testing Agency.
CBSE also conducted AIPMT (All India Pre Medical Test) for admission to major medical colleges in India. In 2014, the conduct of the National Eligibility Test for grant of junior research fellowship and eligibility for assistant professor in institutions of higher learning was outsourced to CBSE.[9]
Apart from these tests, CBSE also conducts the Central Teacher Eligibility Test and the Class X optional proficiency test.[9]With the addition of NET in 2014, the CBSE had become the largest exam conducting body in the world.[9][10]
On 10 November 2017, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared a proposal for creation of a National Testing Agency (NTA) serving as the premier autonomous body for conducting entrance examinations in the country. Beginning in 2018 various exams previously conducted by the CBSE were transferred to the NTA including National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), Joint Entrance Examination – Main, National Eligibility Test, Central Universities Common Entrance Test and others.[11]
For promotion from Secondary level (Class IX-X) to Senior Secondary level (Class XI-XII), a student must obtain, for all subjects (or best 5 if 6 subjects are taken), 33% overall, without any minimum theory mark requirement. Originally, the passing criteria were set such that a student had to get 33% in both the theory and practical components. However, an exemption was initially granted for students writing the exam in 2018 as they went through the old CCE system in the previous year.[12] However, CBSE later extended this relief for students writing the exam from 2019 and later as well.[13] Students who do not manage to pass up to two subjects can write the compartment in those subjects in July. Those who fail the compartment, or fail in three subjects or more, must rewrite all the subjects taken in the next year.
For class 12 students the promotion criteria are 33% overall, with 33% in both theory and practical examinations (if applicable). Students who do not manage to pass in exactly one subject can write the compartment for that subject in July. Those who fail the compartment, or those who fail in two subjects or more, must rewrite all the subjects taken in the next year.
For the Class 10 and Class 12 exams, CBSE (along with the marks obtained) includes the positional grade obtained by the student, which is dependent on the average performance of the students in that subject. Consequently, the cutoffs required to obtain a particular grade vary every year.
The cutoffs required to obtain a particular grade in 2018 are listed below:[15]
During 2010–2017, when CBSE implemented a CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) for Class X students, only the grades obtained by the student were mentioned in the report card in a 9-point grading scale, which translates as below:
