Centre to SC: CBSE forms new policy for result assessment of Class 12 private students in Gulf countries

The Centre has notified the Supreme Court that a separate policy has been implemented for the CBSE Class 12 result declaration for private students from West Asia. The move comes after a petition was filed by a CBSE student from Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, who had challenged the board’s failure to declare his 12th result for the improvement exam conducted this year.

According to media reports, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, who represented the Centre, told the SC bench comprising Justices SVN Bhatti and Vipul M Pancholi that CBSE’s new assessment policy aims to resolve issues faced by private students whose results could not be announced under the previously announced assessment policy for regular students.

A private student, Pransu Jigarkumar Patel, filed a writ petition challenging CBSE's failure to declare his Class 12 improvement exam result. The student claimed that despite CBSE framed a special assessment policy for regular students in Gulf countries, his result was not published on the portal and read "Result Later" (R.L.).

CBSE board Class 12 exams were cancelled in West Asian countries due to the Iran-US war.

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No assessment scheme for Class 12 students

In response to students’ plea, the Centre argued that both regular and private students were affected by this delay.

While the board announced a new assessment scheme for CBSE 12th regular students , which prepared results based on internal assessments, the results for private candidates were not produced as they did not have a school that could provide internal assessment records.

The CBSE's new 12th result assessment scheme for affected students required assessment records such as quarterly, half-yearly, and pre-board examination marks to prepare their final results.

Centre to SC: New policy for private students

Following this, SG Mehta notified SC that a fresh policy has been drafted to address the assessment of private candidates.

Giving details, Mehta said that for the subjects for which examination could not be conducted, the performance will be assessed based on the marks obtained by the private candidate in Class 10 and the last-attempted Class 12 board examination.

He said that under the new policy, for subjects for which the exam was cancelled, the marks would be computed as 40% of the theory marks scored in the Class 10 board and 60% of the theory marks scored in the last attempted Class 12 board exam.

‘Omission was discriminatory’: CBSE’s private student said

Class 12 student had argued that the omission was 'arbitrary and discriminatory,' affecting his higher studies. Patel had claimed that in his case, physics and chemistry exams were conducted, but maths, English, and computer science papers were cancelled.

He had claimed that in the two papers of physics and chemistry in which he appeared, the evaluation was done on actual marks, while in the three cancelled subjects, the evaluation was done under the new assessment, which was notified on June 21.

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Affected private student receives his 12th result

Mehta told the SC bench that under the new assessment policy, the marks Patel got were higher than his earlier performance, and the result was communicated to him via email and would be updated in his DigiLocker.

Read More | From next year, CBSE Class 12 answer sheets on Digilocker: Education ministry

He said that the policy further provided that if a student remained unsatisfied with the assessed marks, can appear in the next CBSE board exam.

The bench asked the counsel appearing for the petitioner whether his grievances had been addressed with the CBSE declaring a new policy.

Advocate Vineet Jindal acknowledged that the 12th result had been declared but urged the court to protect Patel's right to seek copies of answer scripts and pursue 12th re-evaluation in accordance with CBSE guidelines.

The bench pointed to the writ petition and said there were no such requests made in it and clarified that the court cannot grant relief that was not requested.