Board Exam 2026 Pattern Change: After CBSE, 5 states adopt competency-based questions, create question banks

Board Exams 2026: In order to get students used to competency-based questions in their board exams, five state boards have developed question banks for teachers to use in affiliated schools. The Board of School Education, Haryana – HBSE or BSEH – is the first to complete the process, being driven by the independent assessment body, PARAKH, under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

A recommendation of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020), Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH full form) is ushering in changes in Class 10 and Class 12 board exam question patterns to bring equivalence between different central and state education boards and also to ensure the exams assess understanding and not recall. Students will see changes in their question papers from board exams 2026 onwards.

The Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Education (CGBSE), also known as the Chattishgarh Madhyamik Shiksha Mandal, Raipur, has also developed its question bank; it is currently in getting printed. Question banks of Himachal Pradesh (HPBOSE), Nagaland and Uttarakhand Boards (UK Board) are being vetted by PARAKH.

“The question bank is for teachers to use in the internal tests, they are all competency based, so that when students during final exams have to answer a competency based question, it doesn’t come to them as a surprise,” said PARAKH CEO, Indrani Bhaduri.

India has 69 recognised boards, including technical, madrassa, Sanskrit boards and open schools. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) emphasised competency-based questions this year itself and attributed the improved performance to that decision.

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Board Exams: Competency-based questions

PARAKH’s equivalence initiative began with an assessment of the boards themselves. Last year, it published an analysis of Class 10 and Class 12 questions papers of different school boards. It revealed how standards of examination vary widely.

Analysing questions set by 34 boards, the report, Establishing Equivalence Across Education Boards, concluded that question paper difficulty levels not only varied across boards but across subjects in the same board.

Workshops and training of paper setters followed. Careers360 had earlier reported how the analysis revealed that new papers were set simply by “jumbling” items from previous years’ question papers. That’s set to change for several boards from 2026.

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Five boards have already prepared question banks, those of some boards are being checked and others are still in the process of developing them,” said CEO Bhaduri.

CGBSE, HBSE ahead

Haryana board’s question banks for Classes 10 and 12 – called Competency Based Question Booklets – contain 50 questions each. As the document says, they are meant to “familiarise students with the format of Competency-Based Questions”. PARAKH’s analysis had found that the Board of School Education Haryana, Bhiwani (HBSE or BSEH) questions papers required the most “recall” or rote learning.

The Chattishgarh Madhyamik Shiksha Mandal’s question bank has been cleared and has gone for printing. Uttarakhand Board of School Education (UBSE or UK Board); Nagaland Board of School Education, Kohima (NBSE); and Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education (HPBOSE), have submitted their banks of competency-based questions for review

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PARAKH has also framed guidelines for setting “balanced question papers”.

The state boards of Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya are yet to start creating question banks. On Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and even boards like the CBSE and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), there is no progress report available. According to PARAKH’s analysis, the Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP or UP Board) sets questions that require the most “understanding”.