Finally, a good news for students. Students who pick up huge mental stress every year while appearing the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams may have a cool session of assessment.

Understanding the ordeal of lakhs of students appearing for Class X Board exams every year, the National Progressive Schools Conference (NPSC), a parent body to some 110 public schools, including Delhi Public School, Sardar Patel, Laxman Public School, has decided to start scrapping the Class X Board exams altogether for its member schools.

The body plans to start an evaluation system of its own.

''NPSC has mooted the idea to have an examination board of its own. After all, the students should also be assessed by the local board like NPSC,'' said SL Jain, chairman, NPSC.

The idea was proposed in the 35th annual conference of NPSC last month. But thinkers at NPSC believe that the new Board cannot be established just at one go. It has to be done with a lot of research.

''We will first take up research of teaching methodology first, then move on to the evaluation. We plan to phase out the Class X Board exams by 2009 and then move on to the assessment system. But we also feel that parents should be taken into confidence before making any major change in the system,'' said Usha Ram, Principal, Laxman Public School.

If the examination is taken just by 110 schools, then the competition will not be of such high grade, so it should be at the state level.

But some students feel the performance would be better with a local Board.

The proposal has been sent to the Ministry of Human Resources Development, CBSE and Delhi government. However, NPSC is waiting for the final signal before it takes on to the job of framing its own curriculum and formulating its own evaluation system.

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