There is a gap in most CBSE schools between the paper the Board sets in February and the papers the school sets in August. The Board has published exactly what its paper contains. The school paper is usually built the way it was built in 2012.
Here is the composition, from the circular, not from a summary of the circular.
Composition of the theory paper, per CBSE Circular Acad-30/2024
Classes 9-10 and Classes 11-12, session 2024-25: competency-focused questions in the form of MCQs, case-based questions, source-based integrated questions or any other type — 50%. Select response type questions (MCQ) — 20%. Constructed response questions, short answer and long answer as per the existing pattern — 30%.
For Classes 11-12 this was a change: the competency-focused share moved from 40% to 50%, and the constructed response share dropped from 40% to 30%.
Half the paper. Not a supplementary section. Not something the good students attempt at the end. Half.
What the Board means by “competency-focused”
The circular describes these as questions “that assess application of concepts in real-life situations.” The policy behind it is blunter:
“The aim of assessment in the culture of our schooling system will shift from one that is summative and primarily tests rote memorization skills to one that is more regular and formative, is more competency-based, promotes learning and development for our students, and tests higher-order skills, such as analysis, critical thinking, and conceptual clarity.”
In a staff room this gets translated into “add a paragraph before the question.” That is not it. A question wrapped in a paragraph about Ravi going to the market is still a recall question if the paragraph contains the formula and the numbers in the order you need them.
The test is simpler than the jargon. Can a student who has memorised the chapter answer this without understanding it? If yes, it is a recall question wearing a costume.
Three rewrites
The fastest way to see the difference is to take questions you have already set and move them one level.
Class 10 Science: chemical reactions
Recall. “Define a displacement reaction. Give one example.” The student reproduces a definition and one memorised equation.
Competency-focused. “A student stores copper sulphate solution in an iron container overnight. In the morning the solution has changed colour and the container is pitted. Explain what happened and write the equation. Would a copper container have behaved the same way? Why?”
The second one cannot be answered from memory. It needs the reactivity series applied to a situation the student has not been shown, plus a counterfactual that catches the student who has learned “metals react” without learning which way round.
Class 10 Mathematics: arithmetic progressions
Recall. “Find the 20th term of the AP 3, 7, 11, ...” One formula, one substitution.
Competency-focused. “A water tank leaks. On the first day it loses 3 litres, on the second 7 litres, on the third 11 litres. The tank holds 2,000 litres. On which day does it run dry? State one assumption you made that may not hold in practice.”
Same formula underneath. But the student has to recognise the progression without being told it is one, work with a cumulative sum rather than a single term, and notice that the model breaks. The last sentence is the part that separates a student who is thinking from a student who is substituting.
Class 9 Social Science: source-based
Recall. “List three causes of the French Revolution.”
Competency-focused. Give an extract from a contemporary account. Ask: what does this source tell you about the author's position in society, and which of the causes you have studied does it support or complicate? Ask for one thing the source cannot tell you.
The last question is the useful one. Knowing the limits of a source is a competency. It is also almost never taught, because it is almost never tested at school level.
Where schools go wrong
Writing the paper, then classifying it. If you count competency questions after the paper exists, you will find exactly enough of them. Every teacher does this and every teacher knows they are doing it. Build the blueprint first, with marks allocated per cognitive level, and write to the grid.
Confusing difficulty with cognitive level. A long, fiddly numerical with four steps of arithmetic is hard. It is still recall plus stamina. Meanwhile a two-mark MCQ where each distractor corresponds to a specific misconception is easy in minutes and genuinely diagnostic. Hard and higher-order are different axes.
Teaching in one register and testing in another. If the year's lessons are notes-and-numericals and the paper is application, the paper is not an assessment. It is an ambush. The composition of the Board paper is public precisely so that teaching can move with it.
Setting good questions and then reporting a percentage. This is the one that wastes the most effort. You write a paper where half the questions probe application. The student scores 64%. What did you learn? That they scored 64%. The information about which competency failed, whether recall is intact and application weak or the other way round, was in the marking and is now gone.
The part that makes it worth the trouble
Competency-focused questions produce a more interesting failure. A student who cannot reproduce a definition has a gap you can name in one word. A student who reproduces the definition perfectly and then cannot use it has a gap that is invisible in a percentage and very visible in a board exam.
To see it you need the mark for each question attached to two things: the concept it tests, and the cognitive level it demands. Then a term's worth of papers tells you something like: this class has the reactivity series but cannot apply it; that student has the application but loses marks on the written explanation. Those are two different lessons on Monday.
That is the whole argument for concept-level tracking, and CBSE has made it for us by fixing half the paper at competency level. The questions are changing whether or not the reporting does. It is the reporting that decides whether anyone benefits.
Where to get practice material without writing it yourself
CBSE publishes Competency Focused Practice Question booklets by subject and grade, free, on the academic site. They are the Board's own worked examples of what it considers a competency-focused item, which makes them a better reference than any commercial guide. If your department is arguing about whether a question counts, settle it against those rather than against opinion.
Start with one subject and one class. Set one paper to the published composition, mark it against a blueprint, and look at what the marks tell you that last term's marks did not. That is a two-week experiment, not a reform programme.
Common questions
What percentage of a CBSE board paper is competency-based?
Under CBSE Circular Acad-30/2024, competency-focused questions make up 50% of the theory paper for Classes 9-10 and 50% for Classes 11-12. Select response (MCQ) questions are 20% and constructed response questions in the existing pattern are 30%.
Is a competency-based question the same as a case study question?
A case study is one format competency-focused questions take. The circular lists MCQs, case-based questions, source-based integrated questions "or any other type". The format is not what makes a question competency-based; what makes it competency-based is that answering requires applying a concept rather than reproducing it.
Does a competency-based question have to be long?
No. A single well-built MCQ with a plausible distractor for each common misconception tests application perfectly well and takes a student ninety seconds.
How do I know if my own paper meets the CBSE composition?
Build a blueprint before writing the questions, with a column for cognitive level, and count the marks in each column. If you write the paper first and classify afterwards, you will classify recall questions as application because you want the total to come out right.
Sources
- CBSE Circular Acad-30/2024, Assessment and Evaluation Practices of the Board for the Session 2024-25 (3 April 2024) — source of the 50/20/30 composition quoted here
- CBSE Academic, Competency Based Education: Assessment
- CBSE, Competency Focused Practice Questions (Science, Grade 10) — the Board's own worked examples, free
- National Education Policy 2020, paragraph 4.34
Competency-focused questions are only worth setting if the marks come back tagged to something.
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