The Central Board of Secondary Education’s recent decision to redesign the assessment structure by making 50 percent of board examination questions competency-based from 2026 onward marks one of the most significant shifts in Indian schooling in decades. It signals a long-overdue departure from the culture of rote memorisation and predictable examination patterns toward a more thoughtful, analytical, and application-driven model of learning. On paper, it is a leap forward—ambitious, progressive, and aligned with the National Education Policy 2020.
In practice, however, it may also become a stress test for the deeply uneven architecture of Indian schooling: a landscape divided not only by geography, but by access, training, resources and exposure. If implemented well, this reform could reshape the intellectual character of the next generation. If mishandled, it risks widening the existing rural–urban educational divide and intensifying academic inequalities.
For now, reactions across the country range from enthusiastic applause to mild panic.
Why the Reform Matters
For decades, Indian education has operated like a memory championship: the ability to reproduce textbook lines verbatim often counted more than understanding them. Students trained themselves to predict “important questions” based on previous papers and coaching centre guidance. Many schools proudly declared 100% pass rates despite classrooms where thinking was optional, and comprehension was secondary to repetition.
Competency-based questions—case-based, analytical, situational, interdisciplinary—aim to break that model. They demand that students interpret, infer, compare, evaluate and apply knowledge to unfamiliar contexts. In other words, for the first time, exam answers may require actual understanding.
For countless students who learn by logic and reasoning but lose marks because they cannot memorise flawlessly, this transformation is nothing short of liberating. The quiet, logical thinker in the back row who understands everything but cannot recite paragraphs like a tape recorder may finally get their chance to shine.
Meanwhile, professional memorizers—who historically topped exams by inhaling guidebooks the night before—may now find their competitive edge dulled. Revision notes alone will no longer guarantee victory. Even parents who proudly claimed “Aunty’s son said this question will definitely come” must now retire their insider intelligence networks.
The Rural–Urban Divide: A Harsh Reality Check
While the reform aims for equity and modernisation, its consequences may unfold unevenly.
Students in urban private schools, armed with trained teachers, digital tools, laboratories, open discussions, and exposure to problem-based learning are well positioned to adapt. For them, competency-based questions are not unfamiliar; many already encounter them through Olympiads, projects, international curricula and coaching ecosystems.
But the situation changes dramatically when one travels beyond metropolitan boundaries.
In thousands of rural and government schools, classrooms are overcrowded, resources limited, teacher shortages chronic, professional training irregular, and learning often reduced to dictation from the blackboard. Many students from rural backgrounds are first-generation learners without academic support at home. For them, a system designed around application-based reasoning may feel like being asked to run a marathon without shoes.
Even teachers in these areas may struggle initially—not due to lack of dedication, but because their own training and institutional framework were never designed for such pedagogy. Teaching application requires time, materials and conceptual freedom. When schools function without libraries, practical labs, or even stable electricity, such reforms risk becoming policy statements floating far above ground reality.
Thus, while elite schools celebrate reform as academic evolution, rural schools face its shockwaves without safety nets.
Coaching Centres and the New Market Landscape
The examination overhaul also threatens the long-standing business model of coaching industries built on predictable patterns and solved papers. Their survival strategy will now involve reinventing themselves as training camps for analytical thinking—an ironic concept, considering thinking is ideally not something one should require coaching to perform.
But the shift also risks pushing more rural families toward expensive coaching in the desperate hope of keeping up. Unless academic reform is accompanied by structural investment in government schools, the idea of equitable education may remain aspirational rather than real.
Teachers: The Backbone and the Battlefield
The success of competency-based learning depends primarily on teachers’ ability to facilitate it. They must plan activities, ask probing questions, and encourage curiosity rather than memorisation. Yet professional development remains inconsistent across states. Without substantial training and curriculum support, teachers may struggle to create or evaluate competency-based responses fairly—leading to subjective marking and confusion.
Simply redesigning examination patterns without equipping educators is like upgrading a car engine without training the driver.
A Reform Full of Promise—But Demanding Courage
The CBSE must be credited with ambition. India desperately needs graduates who can solve problems, innovate and think independently—not merely reproduce information. The global economy is not hiring memory machines; artificial intelligence already does that better.
If executed responsibly, this reform could:
- Reduce exam fear and encourage real understanding
- Promote creativity, logic and problem solving
- Bridge the employment-education gap
- Transform India into a knowledge-driven society
But execution is key. Reform must travel beyond circulars and PowerPoint presentations. It must reach classrooms, teachers, and students—not through expectations, but through real support.
Without investment, training and equal resource distribution, the competency revolution may become another reminder of the gap between policy ambition and implementation reality. The new system must not create a scenario where urban students write analytical essays while rural students stare helplessly at questions they were never prepared to solve.
The future of millions depends on ensuring that competency-based learning becomes a tool of empowerment, not a new form of exclusion.
The decision to make 50% of board exam questions competency-based is bold, necessary and progressive. But like all revolutions, it demands infrastructure, planning and empathy. The reform should not merely reward those already privileged; it must uplift those who need change the most.
If done well, it may produce a generation of thoughtful, inventive, confident young Indians.
If not, it risks producing only one thing in abundance:
competency-based confusion.
And somewhere in the corner, NCERT textbooks wait hopefully, whispering:
“Maybe now they’ll actually read us.”
Also Read….https://theinditimes.com/?p=1124
