New Delhi, Mar 1: Central Board of Secondary Education's class 12 and 10 examinations, for which a record 13.13 lakh students have registered this year, commenced today.

The examinations are being conducted across 5,018 centres of which 375 are sensitive and have additional security. The national capital alone has 1,109 centres. The Board, this year, introduced redesigned High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) question paper for both the standards. Based on the National Curriculum Framework--2005, the new design includes about 10 per cent of very short answer questions and about 20 per cent of questions to assess HOTS.

While the class 10th examinations will conclude on March 27, the twelfth standard examinations will end on April 2. This year more than 7.65 lakh students are writing the class ten examination and more than 5.48 lakh the 12th examination, which is an about 8 per cent increase in the total number of candidates this year.

From the Delhi region, a total 3.8 lakh candidates are appearing for the boards. While for class ten the number has increased by 5.68 per cent with 2.19 lakh pupils.

An upward trend has also been registered for class 12 by 2.6 per cent with more than 1.60 lakh students.

In the special category, which includes blind, dyslexics and handicapped, a total of 2,478 students are appearing in class 10 and 12 examinations compared to last year's 2,132.

However, Delhi has witnessed a marginal reverse trend this year in this category with 1,105 candidates having registered for the examinations against 1,127, in 2007. As many as six centres for class X and nine for class XII blind candidates have been set up with specially trained examiners.


UNI