After the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) announced the implementation of a semester system for Class XI from the current academic session (2024-25) and for Class XII from the 2025-26 academic session in all state-run and state-aided schools, earlier this year, semester system will be introduced in the primary education system in the state from the next academic year, West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) President Goutam Paul said on Friday.

Mr Paul said that with the new system, there will be a major reshuffle in the syllabus in the primary education system.

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With the semester system there will be evaluation twice in an academic year, replacing the earlier system where it was being done once a year.

“The new system of evaluation will be termed as a credit-based semester system. The system will cover from first to fifth standards. The examination in 2025 will be in the old syllabus. However, the new syllabus will be effective from 2026. The school education department has already approved the changed system,” he said.

In the new system, the first semester will be from January to June and the second, from July to December.

The examination for the first semester will carry 40 marks and the second semester will carry 60 marks. In the earlier system, there was a single examination in a year carrying 100 marks.

In the new system, there will be no written examination in the first semester. Of the 40 marks in the first semester, 20 will be on the basis of the attendance and conduct of the students in classes and the remaining 20 marks will be on subject-specific internal assessment.

The second semester will be totally written examination-based. The question paper would be set centrally by the WBBPE replacing the earlier system where individual schools were assigned to set the questions.

However, the evaluation of the answer sheets will be done by the teachers of the schools concerned.

The board informed that in the new system, there will be a total of 376 hours of classes in a year in the first and second standards. The credit score of the students will be based on that with the highest ceiling being fixed at 13.5.

For the third, fourth and fifth standards, there will be 460 hours of class in a year and the highest ceiling of that credit score for these three has been fixed at 16.5.

“Since the evaluation process in this new system will start from the primary education level, the students will get acclimatised to the system existing in the next higher levels of school education,” Paul said.