The CBSE will not just check the students’ ability for higher studies but will also check if they are fit to live in the society from this academic year.
In the Class 10 and 12 board exams 5 percent of marks in each of the core subjects will be allotted for value education. The idea is to prepare students to live in a multilingual, multicultural and multi-religious country.
The CBSE has decided to follow an interdisciplinary approach where values are intermingled with the content of all major subjects. “It has been felt that our educational ecosystem needs to be further strengthened to deliver values enshrined in the Constitution. Curricula cutting across all subjects need to articulate values in explicit terms and the assessment schemes must reciprocate by assigning a weighting to value-based items,” CBSE joint director Ram Shankar said in a letter.
In each subject, 5 percent weightage will be given at the summative assessment level or board exam to answers to value education questions integrated with the content. The questions will be for five marks in a 100-marks paper and 3-4 marks in a paper of 70-90 marks. A potential question in economics is: a father in his will gives 40 percent each to his son and daughter and 20 percent to his servant who has been with him for long. Why has he done it and what is the value addition? 8 Answer: Gender equality and charity.
While the questions would be included in the Class 10 and 12 boards, schools have been asked to select relevant questions from a question bank prepared by the board to include in end-of-term exams for Classes 9 and 11. These questions will be asked in the final exam paper of every major subject.
School heads welcomed the move. “We have been evaluating students on their values in the formative assessments, but this move will send out the message that it is as important to learn values and ethics as it is to learn subject matter,” said Chennai CBSE Sahodaya School Complex chairperson Margrette David Raj.
