Madhyamik

Madhyamik is a centralised examination conducted by West Bengal Board of Secondary Education at the end of 10th standard of school. It is the most popular 10th standard examinations in India. More than 7,50,000 (0.75 Million) students took the exam in 2006 and the number increases substantially every year. Unfortunately, there was a drop of over 1 lakh students in 2007. A wide range of reasons varying from dropouts to failure in Class 9 has been suggested by the Board. Compulsory subjects are first language, second language, physical science (physics and chemistry), life science, mathematics, history and geography.

Of these First Language has two papers of 90 marks each, all others have 1 paper each of 90 marks except Second Language and Mathematics, which have 1 paper each of 100 marks. In addition, corresponding to each paper worth 90 (rather than the full 100) marks, the school is allocated 10 marks for internal evaluation. One exception is when the examinees does not take the exam from any school, in which case there are 10 extra marks in the written papers.

There is also an optional "additional" subject that can be chosen from those offered by the school among a huge selection allowed by the Board. The most common choice is Work Education + Physical Education. Other popular choices include Mechanics and Mathematics (the almost universal choice of high-scoring students) and Book keeping (common among middle range students). Though the subject is optional, very few students fail to take it. If the marks obtained in the additional subject is more than 34, 34 marks is deducted and the rest is added to the Grand Total marks. For marks equal or lesser than 34, no marks are added to the Grand Total. Despite the presence of this subject, percentage totals are calculated in 800 and not 900 marks, thus offering the chance to score more than 100% marks though this has not been realised yet.

Efforts are going on to calibrate the syllabus with the much much easier and higher-scoring (but broader, including more topics but lacking in depth) national curriculum offered by the central boards ICSE and CBSE. There have been suggestions that the Madhyamik should be taken on the syllabus of Class 10 only as introduced in the Higher Secondary. However no concrete decision has been made and the students of the current year (2007) are giving it like before, on the syllabi of both classes 9 and 10.

For Madhyamik 2007, the whole syllabus for all the subjects have been changed to lessen the load on the students. There has both been some additions and some trimming done to all the subjects.

Students passing Madhyamik usually go on to take Higher Secondary Examination.

Official Website of WBBSE - http://www.wbbse.co.in/subcode.htm