Central Board of Secondary Education Plans Open-Book Exams
Children of a School in New Delhi. Photo by Rakesh Raman / RMN News Service (file photo)
Central Board of Secondary Education Plans Open-Book Exams
The OBE model is expected to remove the practice of learning by rote and enhance analytical, creative, and problem-solving skills among students.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is planning to hold Open Book Examinations (OBE) for students of different classes in the country.
Initially, the OBE scheme – which follows the recommendations of the new National Curriculum Framework released in 2023, will be experimented on students of class 9 to 12, before extending it to other classes.
In a February 22 report in The Indian Express newspaper, CBSE has proposed a pilot run of open-book tests in a few schools for English, Mathematics, and Science for Classes 9 and 10.
Similarly, the OBE model will be used for English, Mathematics, and Biology for Classes 11 and 12 during the ongoing academic year. The objective is to evaluate time taken by students to complete such tests and the response of different stakeholders such as students, teachers, or parents.
The Indian Express report explains that in an open-book exam, students are allowed to carry their notes, textbooks, or other study material and refer to them during the examination.
The OBE model is expected to remove the practice of learning by rote and enhance analytical, creative, and problem-solving skills among students. In the examination, the students will be required to refer to their notes, books, or other reference material to explain the subject rather than merely repeating what is written in textbooks.
It is expected that CBSE will complete the design of OBE pilot in the next few months with the help of Delhi University, which has introduced open-book tests for its students.
In order to implement the OBE model successfully, CBSE will need to completely restructure the content of textbooks which are currently written in a haphazard manner.
