CBSE board says class 10 mathematics retest won’t be held, leak had no impact on exam

There will be no retest of the Class 10 mathematics exams, a source from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said on Tuesday. According to an official, the decision was taken after a thorough analysis and evaluation of answer sheets found no trends to indicate that the leak impacted the exam.

An official announcement is expected later today. The news will come as a relief for the 1.7 million students who took the exam on March 28. The board has been facing public ire since it announced a retest for the class 10 Mathematics and class 12 Economics exam in light of the exam paper being leaked. Images of a handwritten maths question paper were being circulated on social media since March 26. While the class 12 economics examination has been scheduled for April 25, the board was yet to announce a date for the class 10 exam. Earlier reports said that it could likely conduct the exam in July. A bench of the Delhi high court, however, asked the CBSE as to how could it wait till July to re-conduct the test and keep the students on “tenterhooks” till then.

In a hearing on April 2, the court observed that it would not only waste an academic year of the students, but would also be akin to keeping “a sword hanging over their heads.” The CBSE said no decision had been taken yet regarding the class 10 maths re-examination as it was ascertaining if the leak was pan-India or confined to Delhi and Haryana alone. The court subsequently asked the CBSE to take a decision on the issue and inform it by April 16, saying that even class 10 is crucial for the students as they decide on the basis of their results what streams of studies to take up for classes 11 and 12. The court was hearing public interest litigations that asked for the exam to be held in April instead of July, and for leniency in the marking scheme. This is perhaps the first time in the board’s history that such wholesale retests are happening. There have been retests in the past, but these have been restricted to a few centres.