What the board means by competency-based
A competency-based question tests whether a student can use a concept, not whether they can recall it. It presents a situation, a passage, a data set or a case the student has not seen, and asks them to apply, analyse, evaluate or create with what they have learned. The shift follows the National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education, which set understanding and application above rote learning as the purpose of assessment.
The board's circulars and the year's sample question papers are the authority for the share of competency-based items and the formats in each subject; both have changed year on year and will again. This guide describes the direction of travel; the current circular gives the numbers.
How the papers have changed
The board announced the shift in stages, raising the proportion of competency-focused questions each session until it reached half the paper in Class 10 and Class 12, with the remainder split between objective items and constructed responses. The formats that carry the competency weight are consistent across subjects.
- Multiple-choice questions built on a scenario or a stimulus rather than a definition.
- Case-based and source-based questions: a passage, a chart, a map or a data table followed by a set of items that require reading and reasoning.
- Assertion-reasoning items, which test whether a student understands why a statement is true rather than that it is.
- Short and long constructed responses that require a solution to be worked in a new context, with marks for the reasoning.
Two board examinations for Class 10
Alongside the change in question style, the board has approved two examination opportunities for Class 10 in a year, with the first in the early part of the year and the second some months later, so that a student can improve a result. The details of eligibility, subjects and dates are set by the board's circulars for the session, which are the authority; a school should read them in full before telling families how the two sittings work.
What has to change in the classroom
The examination cannot be prepared for by more of the same. Competency-based questions reward students who have practised applying concepts to new situations, which means the practice has to happen in lessons and in internal assessment, not only in a revision fortnight.
- Teach the concept, then use it: every unit ends with an unfamiliar situation the concept explains, worked in class.
- Read stimulus material as a skill: passages, graphs, tables and cases, with time spent on what the material shows before what the question asks.
- Write internal assessments in the board's formats, so periodic tests and multiple assessments look like the paper.
- Ask why: assertion-reasoning items fail students who know the fact and not the mechanism.
- Mark reasoning, not only answers, in class, so students learn that the working carries marks.
- Use the board's sample papers and marking schemes as they are released, and analyse them with the department rather than handing them out.
What the school should track
A head cannot see from a total mark whether the school's students are losing marks on competency items or on recall. Internal assessments tagged by question type, with results analysed by type, show where the gap is, by subject and by class, while there is still time to close it. The same analysis of the school's board results, question type by question type, tells the department what to change next year.
Telling students and parents
Students who have been told that the board rewards memory prepare accordingly and are surprised in the hall. The message from the school should be plain and early: the paper asks you to use what you know in situations you have not seen; here is what those questions look like; here is how we practise them. Parents who understand the shift stop asking for more notes and start asking whether their child can explain things.
