The ICSE council announced on Friday that annual examinations of classes IX and XI in all schools in the hills will start on November 4, and from February 10 in the plains.

The Class IX annual examination in the hills will continue till November 20 and the one for Class XI will end on November 27.

In the plains, the Class IX annual exam will end on February 26, while the Class XI exam will be over on March 4.

The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) posted the detailed timetable of the exams on its official website `https://www.cisce.org/` on Friday.

This is the first time that all the 2,100-odd schools affiliated to the CISCE will be holding the annual examinations for classes IX and XI following a uniform schedule drawn up by the council, a move that has, by and large, been hailed by schools in Jharkhand.

Until last year, the schools in the hills would hold the annual examinations in November and those in the plains would conduct the tests in February. But the examinations were held on different dates at different schools.

The CISCE had announced last year its decision to introduce a uniform examination system for classes IX and XI for all its affiliated schools.

For example, the annual examinations will be held on a common schedule with question papers in all major subjects being prepared by the council.

The answer scripts of the internal tests will be evaluated by individual schools but in accordance with council guidelines. The results of the internal tests will have to be announced within the deadline set by the council.

The council, however, had said that individual schools would set the questions for vernacular and application-based subjects.

“It is a welcome decision as students will benefit. Yes, there will be a little pressure, but students will learn lessons they ought to know in the particular class that they are in. Nothing more and nothing less,” said principal of Bishop Westcott Boys' School-Ranchi Richard Thornton.

“There will be uniformity in everything, from syllabus coverage, correction and the difficulty level of the questions,” said Rajani Shekhar, principal of DBMS English School-Jamshedpur. “Students will be in a better position to be judged. It is good for them because they would know how their board exams would be next year.”

The council took the decision to follow a uniform examination system for classes IX and XI following complaints that several institutions skipped important chapters in these two classes to focus more on teaching topics prescribed for classes X and XII in IX and XI, respectively.

In ICSE, the students are tested only in the Class X syllabus and in ISC only on Class XII syllabus.

“The ICSE and ISC syllabuses had been split to ensure that students learnt the entire ICSE and ISC syllabuses thoroughly. But there is no point in having a truncated syllabus if the students are not taught the classes IX and XI syllabuses well,” said Ranjan Mitter, the principal of The Future Foundation School.