CBSE Class 12 Board Exam Analysis: ‘The paper was good, balanced, and standardised’

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) scheduled the Class XII exams for 2025 to be conducted from February 15, 2025, to April 4, 2025, in the traditional pen-and-paper format. The exams opened with the subject of Entrepreneurship and will conclude with Psychology. The Board also released the 2025 syllabus, outlining the critical chapters and topics that students must focus on.

The Board conducted the Class XII Biology exam on March 25, 2025. The three-hour exam commenced at 10:30 am and concluded at 1:30 pm, marking the completion of this year’s CBSE Board exams. Students were allotted 15 minutes, from 10:15 am to 10:30 am, to thoroughly review the question paper before beginning the test.

The Board had declared the date sheet in November last year. This year, approximately 44 lakh students from 26 countries appeared for the Board exams.

Format of the question paper

The question paper comprised five sections A, B, C, D, and E.

Section A: Comprised 16 objective-type questions, which included 14 MCQs and 4 assertion-reason questions. This section had source-based, diagram-based, graph-based, and information-based questions that had to be answered after analysing and interpreting the content.

Section B: It had 5 questions of short answer type I of 2 marks each. One question had an internal choice.

Section C: Comprised 7 questions of shorter answer type II of 3 marks each. One question had an internal choice.

Section D: Comprised of two sets of case-based questions of 4 marks each. This section had information on high-order thinking skills, which required a thorough reading of the content, and it had to be correlated with the content learnt for precision in writing answers.

Section E: It had three questions of long answer type questions 5 marks each with internal choices in all three questions.

According to Ms Malini Sridhar, Middle School Coordinator and PGT Biology, Apeejay School, Pitampura, who had the opportunity to look through two of the three Biology exam sets shared that the paper was good — not very easy, but balanced and standardised.

“Some questions were straightforward and familiar, especially those related to topics like nucleotides, graphical representations of pregnancy vs. non-pregnancy, and questions typically seen in CBSE papers. However, there were a few challenges as well. Certain questions had a slight twist, particularly in the MCQs. For example, some of the options in the MCQs were very closely related, making it difficult for students to determine the correct answer. This kind of subtle complexity can lead to students losing marks even if they understand the topic,” the educator said.

The paper also included terms not mentioned in the NCERT textbook. For instance, the word ‘scaffold’ appeared in one of the questions. While scaffolding means a supporting structure, students unfamiliar with this term may struggle unless they have strong English language skills. Similarly, a reasoning-based question stated that mammary glands are modified sweat glands. Although this is scientifically accurate, the NCERT textbook does not explicitly mention it, which could confuse students and lead to incorrect answers in assertion-reasoning type questions, she said.

“As compared to last year, I would say the paper was good. It wasn’t a cakewalk where everyone would score in the 70s, but it wasn’t too difficult either. There was internal choice provided, as outlined in the sample paper, which is helpful for students. The paper wasn’t lengthy, which means students likely had enough time to attempt all the questions,” Ms Sridhar added.