As students walked out after the class X CBSE Board exams which began with Mathematics on Saturday, some came out gleaming while others had a mixed response.
The response to the difficulty level and length of the paper ranged from “very easy”, to “moderate”, to “quite tough”.
According to the CBSE, of the 14,904 students who registered to write the class X examinations this year in the city, as many as 10,753 or 72% of the students opted for the board-based exam over the school-based exam.
S. Mohamed Rasith said he opted for the board-based exam primarily to get exposure to write a board paper. But, the paper, he said, was tough, especially a few four-mark questions. “The paper was also quite long,” he said.
P. Dhruv, a student, said though it was long, he found Saturday’s Mathematics paper easier than the SA-I (Summative Assessments) mathematics paper. “I did this paper well, and am hoping that it will push my overall grade up,” he said, adding he had done well in his last two formative assessments. Students said they were apprehensive about the value-based question introduced by the Board this year, especially in the Mathematics paper, but after the exam, most were satisfied with the question.
Simran Tandon was beaming after the “easy exam”. “Mathematics is an important paper, and I’m happy about how I performed. I can concentrate on the other papers now,” she said.
When Sujish Kumar, who got a question paper from the second set, was asked how he had found the paper, he said, after contemplating for some time, “Not to easy, not so tough,” and added, “It was moderate. Some four-mark questions were difficult and I did not get the answers for them.”
P. Bhakiya Lakshmi was disappointed that there was no choice in the questions.
A principal of a CBSE school explained that the academic year is broadly split into two Summative Assessments and each term carries 50 per cent weightage. Students on Saturday wrote the SA-II paper which carries 30 per cent weightage in the overall marking scheme.
D.T. Sudarshan Rao, regional officer, CBSE,said the examination took place without any disruptions. On the difficulty levels of the three sets of papers, he said, “The difficulty levels do not vary in the three sets, and this practice is in place to curb malpractice.”
