Kolkata: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has taken one-step forward to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry's decision to do away with the archaic system and switch over to Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) mode up to Class VIII.

The CBSE has recently proposed to discard the annual and half-yearly mode of examinations in schools until class XI from the coming 2011-12 session and have introduced the CCE up to Class X replacing the board examination from the 2010-11 session.

The proposal for class XI awaits the approval of the HRD Ministry after which their entire syllabus will be divided into four schedules.

There will be class tests accompanied by project work and viva, which will help teachers access the understanding level of children.

These tests will be followed by another test spread over a bigger syllabus.

The idea behind this is to ensure that students do not depend upon learning by rote. Students will now take four 'formative' tests, which would be more intensive in nature but would include few chapters and two 'summative' covering half of the lessons taught in class.

"There would be more stress on the internal assessment of students as we mull to introduce a comprehensive assessment system till the candidates appear for their first and only board examinations after class XII," said a senior CBSE official.

However, the board will set questions for the CCE.