Scrapping of CBSE sample papers upsets students

CHANDIGARH: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has done away with the practice of publishing sample papers for classes X and XII, a move most of the teachers praised but students trashed.
The CBSE wants students to focus more on their textbooks than these papers that were being printed for over 20 years and used to mention the pattern of questions one could expect in the final exams.In fact, many private publishers also publish their own versions of sample papers based on them. According to CBSE, students adopted a selective approach when studying for exams, forcing them to take this decision.
Rakesh Sachdeva, principal, DAV Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 15, feels that the abolition of the sample papers is a step in the right direction. She feels students are taught well in the classroom itself and do not require the aid of any papers. "Teachers are very thorough in teaching their lessons, students don"t need any other material," she adds.
Vineeta Arora, principal, Bhavan Vidyalya, disagrees. "The sample papers simply help the students by giving them an idea of the questions and their level of difficulty." She feels that students practice selective studying because CBSE gives a certain weightage to every portion of every subject, making selective studying inevitable.
As expected, students are not pleased with the CBSE decision. Riya Arora, a student of Class 10, says, "The sample papers are very helpful to us and I think its wrong for them to not give us the advantage of them. We don't really rely on sample papers but the just vanish the fear a student has about the type of questions".
Sandeep Trivedi, another student, says, "I don"t think it promotes selective studying rather I think it helps us to thoroughly study every subject."