December 10, 2013, 12:03 pm
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has informed schools that it will start dispatching question papers of Problem Solving Assessment (PSA) by third week of December. The PSA, applicable to Class IX and XI students, is scheduled for January 18 from 10am to 12 noon.
A circular issued by the board stated, "Schools are requested to verify if any bilingual question paper is also needed to be sent i.e. Hindi & English, for the candidate(s) opting Hindi medium. The above statement is to be confirmed by each school online."
Earlier, the PSA was an optional test which students took to gauge their quantitative and qualitative skills. From January onwards, this test will be made mandatory and its marks will be included in the marking scheme of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system for standard IX in its formative assessment. Since the CCE pattern does not apply to standard XI students, they will be given a certificate with their scores mentioned.
It is important for Class IX students to note that there score will be reflected in one language (English/Hindi), mathematics, science and social science.
Unlike previous years, there is no separate registration required to be done by students as the board has taken into account the numbers from the enrolment data sent by schools. Since the test will be in a multiple choice questions (MCQ) format, the quantity of question papers to be sent by CBSE will be in accordance with total number of students registered. A special OMR (Optical mark recognition) answer sheet will be included inside the booklet.
The board has clarified that there will be a common question paper for Class XI students regardless of whether a student has opted for the science, commerce or humanities stream. "There will be a single question paper covering qualitative reasoning, quantitative reasoning and language conventions," the notification added.
