Class 10th Students Must Secure 25% Marks to Be Promoted to the Next Class

This ongoing academic season in the country is going through some major changes for a while. For example, the recent CBSE’s decision to consider minimum 25% marks obtained by students in their summative assessments in order to promote them to the next class.

Introduced during the academic session of 2013-14, the rule was first made mandatory for class 9th students. According to reports, over 2000 students in Government schools are struggling to be promoted to the next class due to this rule.
CBSE has implemented this rule to class x students to reinforce the importance of written exams in them. The board believes that the importance of class x written exams was lost after the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system was introduced in 2010-11.
Students were initially required to score D grade to be promoted to the next class, which they could do easily through formative assessments based on co-curricular activities and projects. In the academic year 2013-14, CBSE decided that the class 9th students would have to secure at least 25% marks in SAs. The rule has now been extended to class 10th.
SAs are tests conducted twice a year— SA-1 is conducted in September while SA-2 at the end of the year.
City-based CBSE counsellor Rakesh Sachdeva said ,”The 25% clause would make students take written tests seriously. Furthermore, recently the board also gave an additional opportunity to Class-9 students who failed to secure the mandated marks in SAs in the the 2013-14 session. This was done because the system was new. But from this session, there will be no such relief and students will have to remain vigilant from very beginning.”
Prem Kaur, a head of a local government school, said, “the CBSE’s condition for promoting Classes 9 and 10 students was welcome, the system would not change unless the fear of academics is instilled in students from the beginning. Due to the no-detention policy, students take academics very casually.”
“There are infrastructure issues in government schools but this limitation can be overcome to some extent with the better academic policies. What we need is quality education, which is missing at present,” she added.