There will be no toppers when the Class X results are announced by the CBSE on Friday.
With the Central Board of School Education (CBSE) replacing marks with grades in Class X results from this year, the expectations, stress and anxiety levels among students and parents are minimal.
Students will now get to know the grades in each subject, plus the grade point and the cumulative grade point average (CGPA).
While counsellors in the city are receiving queries from parents regarding the grades and the CGPA of the child, the students are a relaxed lot. "I am pretty sure I will get an A1 in all the subjects, so there is no anxiety as such. Also there is no tension whether I score 95 or 96 per cent," says Varnika Chawla of Delhi Public School, R K Puram.
The grades will be awarded on a nine-point scale for each subject.
If a child scores anything between 91 and 100 per cent in a subject, he will be awarded an A1 and a grade point of 10. Similarly, a child getting anything between 81 and 90 per cent marks in a subject will be awarded A and a grade point of 9. An average of all the grade points will then be taken and calculated under CGPA.
"CGPA will help the schools allocate different streams to students in Class XI," says Anita Luthra, academic advisor with Springdales School on Pusa Road.
"Parents have been saying that the system of grading will not be fair to students who score high marks, CGPA will come handy there." Luthra, who has worked with CBSE on grading, adds: "The grade point, multiplied by the factor of 9.5, will give an approximate percentage in the subject."
The practise of declaring compartment/fail has also been discontinued from this year as part of the examination reforms introduced by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal last year.
"If a student gets less marks, it shakes his/her confidence," said D K Bedi, Principal of Apeejay School, Pitampura, "It is good that there will be no marks from this year onwards. I have seen students who go into depression just because somebody else has gained .5 per cent more than him. This puts an end to bad competition." However, the CBSE has a provision of declaring the marks "on a special request".
This will also be the last year of the Class X Board exam. With the CBSE extending the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) to Class X, the 2010-2011 batch will have no Board exams.
However, students studying in schools that are only up to Class X will still have to sit for the CBSE Board exam.
