We - parents, students and concerned individuals - are making an appeal on behalf of many thousands of Class 12 CBSE students who appeared for the Physics Board Examination conducted by CBSE on 4th March 2024.

This petition is to bring to your notice the undue degree of difficulty and lengthiness of the conducted exam, which has impacted the morale, academic performance and prospects of the students who took the exam. Most students also wrote the following Mathematics exam in despair and fear given the experience of the Physics exam. The importance of Class 12 exam results, especially core subject scores, in a student’s academic pursuits and future career choices is obvious and hence, this situation calls for your immediate attention and remedy to bring relief to students who are already in depression.

While it is desirable and appreciable that CBSE is making changes to get away from rote learning towards creating a competitive curriculum in line with other developed countries, it is also imperative to make these changes by aligning textbooks and mode of teaching first. Merely increasing toughness of the exams by setting difficult questions will not serve the purpose and only set the students at a huge disadvantage causing anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues.

With an estimated 3 crore students in 30,000 schools following CBSE curriculum in cities, towns and villages, students from underprivileged backgrounds and villages don’t have resources or facilities like private coaching, internet access, or even reference material to brace the level of difficulty of this paper, not to mention the fact that even bright students nationwide found the exam unduly tough. This will be a huge setback for CBSE students who are aspiring for college education where admissions are competitive and contingent upon Class 12 grades.

In view of this, we urge CBSE and the respected Education Minister to take feedback from schools and parents and consider granting grace marks and leniency in evaluation, to bring CBSE students on par with students from other curricula and not derail their future. We also urge you to act swiftly in the best interests of thousands of affected students.