CBSE Launches Digital Platform to Revolutionise School Assessment System

In a landmark move to transform India’s school evaluation framework, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is developing a state-of-the-art digital platform designed to help teachers across its affiliated schools create high-quality, competency-based assessments.

The initiative represents one of the most significant technology-driven education reforms since the rollout of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which advocates a decisive shift from rote learning to the application and understanding of knowledge.

Currently at the Request for Proposal (RFP) stage, the proposed platform will serve as a centralised digital ecosystem for question creation, quality review, data analytics, and assessment design. It aims to empower teachers to craft both formative and summative assessments that are directly aligned with prescribed learning outcomes.

Moving Beyond Rote Learning

This initiative forms part of CBSE’s ongoing drive to make school education more holistic and less exam-centric. In recent years, the Board has introduced several assessment reforms in accordance with the NEP, redesigning question papers for Classes 10 and 12 to include 50% competency-based questions — a shift towards evaluating students’ conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills rather than memorisation.

At the foundational and middle school levels, CBSE has implemented the Structured Assessment for Analysing Learning (SAFAL) programme for Grades 3, 5, and 8. SAFAL assesses students’ grasp of key concepts and their ability to apply knowledge in real-life contexts. The resulting reports highlight learning gaps and recommend classroom-level interventions to enhance student performance.

Complementing these reforms is the School Quality Assessment and Assurance Framework (SQAAF), which encourages schools to self-evaluate their performance across academic and administrative domains. Select schools also undergo expert-led quality reviews to ensure continuous improvement.

Institutionalising Reform

To sustain and scale these reforms, CBSE has established the Centre of Excellence in Assessment (CEA) — a specialised unit responsible for defining standards for competency-based assessments, developing a national item bank, and guiding schools in adopting the new framework.

The CEA focuses on creating tools that measure higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, reasoning, and problem-solving — marking a significant departure from traditional examinations that rely heavily on memory recall.

The Digital Platform: Features and Design

According to the RFP, CBSE plans to collaborate with a qualified IT solutions partner to design, develop, operate, and maintain the digital assessment platform.

The system will function as a secure, scalable, and teacher-friendly interface supporting educators, subject experts, and administrators.

Key features include:

• Central Question Repository: A structured database of question items categorised by grade, subject, and competency level.
  
  
• Assessment Design Tools: Intuitive drag-and-drop functions and automated blueprints to help teachers create balanced assessments.
  
  
• AI-Powered Quality Review: A Quality Analyser and Reviewer (QAR) tool to check questions for clarity, accuracy, and alignment with learning outcomes.

• Plagiarism and Duplication Detection: AI and NLP-based systems to ensure originality and relevance.

• Data Analytics and Insights: Machine learning algorithms to generate item statistics — including difficulty levels, reliability, and bias indicators — supported by interactive dashboards for real-time tracking.

The platform will also integrate seamlessly with CBSE’s Teacher Identity and Training Systems through Single Sign-On (SSO) access and connect with the Teachers Integrated Formation System (TIFS) for ongoing capacity building.

Teachers from over 27,000 CBSE-affiliated schools will be able to access the central item bank, customise question papers, and contribute new question items. Each contribution will undergo a multi-tier review by subject reviewers and senior reviewers before inclusion in the national repository. Every item will be tagged with metadata — including grade, subject, learning outcome, and Bloom’s taxonomy level — to ensure ease of discovery and contextual use.

Beyond aiding educators, the platform will provide CBSE with powerful analytics to study learning trends, evaluate question quality, and track student performance patterns across regions and grades. Regular internal and third-party audits will be conducted to maintain transparency, data security, and system integrity.

Expert Reactions

Education experts have hailed this initiative as a defining step in India’s transition towards data-driven learning. By embedding technology at the core of assessment design, CBSE aims to shift the national focus from marks-based evaluation to competency-based learning measurement.

“Assessments should not merely test memory, but measure how students think, reason, and apply knowledge,” said a senior CBSE official. “This platform is designed to make that vision a classroom reality.”

Once operational, the platform is expected to serve as a national benchmark for digital education reform, effectively bridging the gap between policy intent and classroom implementation under NEP 2020.