History

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 the 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, Ra­jputana". 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".

Affiliations

CBSE af­fil­i­ates all Kendriya Vidyalayas, all Jawa­har Navo­daya Vidyalayas, pri­vate schools, and most of the schools ap­proved by cen­tral gov­ern­ment of India. There are 1,138 Kendriya Vidyalayas, 3,011 Gov­ern­ment Schools, 16,741 In­de­pen­dent School, 595 Jawa­har Novo­daya Vidyalaya and 14 Cen­tral Ti­betan School.

Examinations

CBSE con­ducts the final ex­am­i­na­tions for Class 10 and Class 12 every year in the month of March. The re­sults are an­nounced by the end of May. 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 con­ducts 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 a ju­nior re­search fel­low­ship and el­i­gi­bil­ity for as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in in­sti­tu­tions of higher learn­ing was out­sourced to CBSE. Apart from these tests, CBSE also con­ducts the Cen­tral Teacher El­i­gi­bil­ity Test and the Class X op­tional pro­fi­ciency test. With the ad­di­tion of NET in 2014, the CBSE has be­come the largest exam con­duct­ing body in the world.

On 10 No­vem­ber 2017, the Union Cab­i­net chaired by Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi cleared a pro­posal for the 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.

Promotion criteria

Class 10

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. How­ever, CBSE later ex­tended this re­lief for stu­dents writ­ing the exam from 2019 and later as well. For a stu­dent who does not man­age to pass up to two sub­jects, he/she can write the com­part­ment in those sub­jects in July. For those who fail the com­part­ment, or those who fail in three sub­jects or more, he/she must rewrite all the sub­jects taken in the next year.

Class 12

For class 12 stu­dents the pro­mo­tion cri­te­ria are 33% over­all, with 33% in both the­ory and prac­ti­cal ex­am­i­na­tions (if ap­plic­a­ble). For a stu­dent who does not man­age to pass on ex­actly one sub­ject, he/she can write the com­part­ment for that sub­ject in July. For those who fail the com­part­ment, or those who fail in two sub­jects or more, he/she must rewrite all the sub­jects taken in the next year.

Grading

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.