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PARAKH, the national assessment centre under NCERT, has identified and trained faculty for each of the 34 state school boards who will be the ‘master trainers’ for their respective boards
The assessment system, under the broader ‘Equivalence of School Boards’ initiative, is in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. (Getty Image for Representation)
School education boards across the country are working on and are likely to introduce the new question paper template for classes 10 and 12, developed by professional paper-setters, from academic session 2025-2026, News18 has learnt.
PARAKH, the national assessment centre under the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), has identified and trained faculty for each of the 34 state school boards who will be the ‘master trainers’ for their respective boards and in turn will train teachers to develop a cadre of paper-setters for the school boards.
The assessment centre has prepared a module and formulated guidelines for developing a cadre of professional paper-setters, full-time teachers who are currently being trained in designing and balancing the question papers, starting with classes 10 and 12, it is learnt.
The training will be provided through the various State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs).
PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), a constituent unit of the NCERT, is tasked with setting standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation for all recognised school education boards in India.
The Centre has been focused on standardising all school education boards in line with NEP. Since education is a subject in the ‘concurrent’ list, states are not bound to follow the directives of the Union government.
The assessment system, under the broader ‘Equivalence of School Boards’ initiative, is in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, which envisages a competency-based education model, where assessment is integrated into the learning process.
In July this year, PARAKH had submitted the ‘Establishing Equivalence Across School Boards’ report to the Union Ministry of Education (MoE). One of the major recommendations of the report, besides suggesting a cumulative system of assessment for classes 9 to 12, was that all state school boards develop a cadre of ‘professional paper setters’ to standardise the assessments in the senior classes.
Also, a report released by the MoE this August showed that more students from state school boards failed class 10 and 12 exams than those enrolled in central school boards.
According to Prof Indrani Bhaduri, CEO of PARAKH, all the 34 school boards are in sync with the equivalence recommendations and are gearing up for training their faculty for developing their own cadre of paper setters by this year-end. So far, all these boards are preparing to introduce the new question paper template from next year’s academic session for classes 10 and 12, which have board examinations.
“We have held training workshops for each of these boards and now all of these have a master trainer, who will be further identifying and training teachers for paper-setting, which unlike the current practice, is a technical exercise and requires a dedicated cadre that is trained in its methodology, the common blueprint and the marking scheme,” Prof Bhaduri said.
Previously, teachers with 8-10 years of experience would set question papers based on past years’ question papers. But, for a paper to be balanced, it requires much more understanding, training, and technique, she added.
The workshops focus on designing question papers that assess a full range of competencies, with hands-on sessions to unpack the previous years’ question papers to understand the gaps and explore the importance of marking schemes as emphasised in the National Curriculum Framework — for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023.
“Marking schemes are as important as test items themselves. Participants dove into “the art of the mark”, learning to balance scoring and question formats to truly reflect students’ understanding. As these officials return to their states, they’re equipped with not only best practices but also a framework that brings India’s boards closer to assessment equivalence — not by cloning, but by aligning standards to support fairness and student mobility across regions,” she said.
While some school boards, such as the Central Board of School Education (CBSE), have introduced a 10 per cent weightage for competency-based questions for classes 11 and 12, not all boards have experimented with this and neither for all subjects. For the past three years, every year the CBSE has been increasing the weightage of concept-application questions by 10 per cent, up to a maximum of 50 per cent.
PARAKH, however, recommends an entirely competency-based question paper for the senior classes.
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