students
Reuters

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday, April 24, scrapped the moderation policy which gives grace marks to students in tough papers.

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The decision was taken at a high-level meeting. The CBSE had in December 2016 requested the Human Resource Developement Ministry to help develop a consensus among all state boards to eliminate the marks-moderation policy, which is billed as the reason behind inflated scores in board exam results.

According to the moderation policy, candidates are awarded up to 15 percent extra marks based on the difficulty level of the questions.

However, the grace marks policy will be employed in future to ensure a student clears an exam if he or she falls short of pass mark in a close range.

The cut-offs for colleges admissions are likely to go down if the state boards also follow suit. According to CBSE, unless the grace-mark policy is done away with across the board, it will put the CBSE students at disadvantage during undergraduate admissions. The CBSE also wants all state boards to be on the same page on mark-moderation policy.