MUMBAI: For many Class 10 students, this year’s CBSE results have fallen short of expectations, with a difficult mathematics paper pushing a significant number towards the board’s first-ever “second exam” in May.Across schools, principals report that between 20% and 35% of students are opting for the betterment round-largely to recover lost marks in maths and science that dented otherwise strong performances.At DPS Navi Mumbai, principal Hari Vashishtha said the impact was visible in Pune region. “The maths and science papers were comparatively quite difficult. The Pune region (includes all of Maharashtra), which used to be in the top five, was pulled down to number seven this time,” he said. “Around 20% students in my school will take up betterment in these subjects while in other schools, it is closer to 30-35%.”Vivaan Awasthi, a Class 10 student from DPS Nerul, had expected a top score in maths but fell short. “A five-mark question was extremely difficult and no one was able to solve it well,” said his father, adding, “we have decided to go in for revaluation and also sit for the second round of exams for maths and science.”Schools say such cases are not isolated. At R N Podar School, director-principal Avnita Bir noted the scale of uptake has been higher than anticipated. “More students are going to go for betterment than we expected. Children are taking up the second round because mathematics brought down the average for many bright and performing students,” she said. Kalpana Dwivedi, principal of Bal Bharati Public School, Kharghar, said nearly a quarter of students had already applied even before results were declared, with numbers now expected to settle between 25% and 30%.Naresh Singh, a mathematics teacher at a city school, said many students in his class were not able to score well this year. “Some questions were completely out of the syllabus and a few other questions were a little bit twisted and many students weren’t able to understand them.”Flexibility is also being offered in maths; students who appeared for ‘Standard’ level in the first round may opt for ‘Basic’ level in May, and vice versa, said a notification issued by the CBSE on Wednesday.The new dual-exam system allows students to reattempt up to three subjects, with the higher score retained-effectively softening the ‘one-shot’ nature of board exams. However, subject trends remain telling. “Mathematics and science are the most common choices for the second round,” said Rashmi Panagriha, principal of Skyline School.Students can seek improvement in up to three subjects- specifically science, maths, social science, and languages.
