The CBSE Class 12 Mathematics board exam analysis

The CBSE Class 12 Mathematics board exam paper was conducted today, March 20, at various test centres across India. According to an experienced CBSE Board examiner for Maths, the paper was quite easy with questions mainly set from the NCERT book. Reports from other teachers also say that NCERT was the main focus for questions this year, along with familiar questions from previous years' papers and NCERT examples and MCQs.
Most students found the paper quite easy and though some said that it was a bit lengthy, no one called the paper difficult. The paper was termed much easier than last year's, but a few of them couldn't complete the entire paper and fell short of time.
India Today got talking to experienced Board examiner Debjani Kar, senior Maths teacher at Hariyana Vidya Mandir, Kolkata, and Shaveta Sachdeva, Mathematics teacher at Ramjas School, Delhi, about the standard of the CBSE 2017 Class 12 Maths paper, and how students could be expected to fare in the results.

Easy paper with focus on NCERT

"The question paper was pretty easy and hardly any questions were set from outside NCERT," says Debjani Kar.
"In the question set from Linear Programming (Set 3), there was no problem sum to be solved. The inequation was given straight away and the students needed to plot it on the graph to find shaded region and then maximise. Linear programming questions have never been set this easy in the past 7-8 years," she adds.
"Students who thoroughly studied their NCERT textbook are bound to score well," says Kar, adding that the few questions which weren't from the NCERT were also quite familiar and one needed only the common reference books such as RS Aggarwal and RD Sharma to ace the exam.

Uncommon questions are also easy

"The questions regarding finding the area by integration, and problems set from Maxima, Minima, Vectors, Continuity and Integration were all very easy. Questions have rarely been set from these chapters in the last two years," says Kar.

Question standards similar across all sets

"The level of the question paper was same across each set of the Maths paper. If one paper had a tricky question, the corresponding questions in the other sets were also tricky," says Shaveta Sachdeva.
"The paper was very good this time. It was a balanced paper and all my students were happy with it. There was no hue and cry with the paper as with the last two years. There were three questions which were a little tricky, but a maths paper should definitely have it," she adds.
"Majority of the questions were NCERT-based and if a child has done NCERT thoroughly and gone about practicing the last 10 years' question papers, then they are bound to find the paper easy for their level," says Sachdeva.

Pass percentage should be better than last year

"The pass percentage will be better this time with the introduction of 2-mark questions and students should be able to score well in 1-mark and 2-mark questions," says Sachdeva.
She adds that the marks were appropriately given unlike last year where a lengthy 1-mark question was set asking to find the median of a triangle.
"There were 3 questions from the 2016 CBSE question paper." "Moreover, questions were set from the NCERT examples as well."

Students speak: 'Easy to score above 90'

Students from Bal Bharti School in conversation with India Today Education team sounded and looked really low and are the students spoken to said they were not expecting more than 70 marks.
However, students from Ramjas School said that the paper was easy. "There were a few tricky questions, but if I had solved such questions before, I would have been able to get full marks," says a student.
"If students have gone through NCERT-the textbook and exemplar-it would be very easy to score 90 in this paper. A perfect score of 100 is also achievable this time if students have gone through every topic of each chapter thoroughly," says Shraunit, yet another student from Ramjas.
"There were 2-3 questions from CBSE sample papers and papers of last year. They were direct question with the same values," he adds.
"Questions were also set from the NCERT MCQ questions, which very few students pay attention to," adds Shraunit.

2-mark questions beneficial for students

"The introduction of 2-mark questions along with the decrease in number of 4-mark questions were beneficial for students this year and many students could finish before time unlike the last two years, where students had to leave the paper unfinished as it was too lengthy," says Shraunit.
"We could save around 15 minutes of time overall for revision as the 2-mark questions can be solved in 3-4 lines while 4-mark questions need to be treated as 6-mark questions and take longer," he adds.

CBSE Mathematics paper preview:

Paper pattern:

This year, there was a change in the paper format. Section B had two-marker questions. A total of 29 questions were assigned to the candidates and all were mandatory.

• Questions 1 - 4 in section A were very short-answer type questions carried one mark each
• Questions 5 - 12 in section B were short-answer type questions carried two marks each
• Questions 13 - 23 in section C were long-answer type questions carried four marks each
• Questions 24 - 29 in section D were long-answer type questions carried six marks each

Last year, students observed a lot of changes in the question paper, the students were complaining about the extremely lengthy paper and the level of difficulty.
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