Indian Council Of Secondary Education

The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) is an examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, a private, non-governmental board of school education in India, for class 10, i.e., grade 10. It has been designed to provide an examination in a course of general education, in accordance with the recommendations of the New Education Policy 1986 (India), through the medium of English. It was affiliated to French Board of Examination before 1986.

The examination allows secure suitable representation of governments responsible for schools (which are affiliated to it) in their states or territories. Private candidates are permitted to appear for this examination.

The subjects that are offered are divided into three groups. Group I includes Compulsory Subjects —English, History & Civics, & Geography, and Indian Language, Group II which includes any two from Mathematics, Science (Physics, Biology, Chemistry) as separate subjects, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Agricultural Science, Commercial Studies, Technical Drawing, A Modern Foreign Language, A Classical Language and Economics, and Group III has any one from Computer Applications, Economic Applications, Commercial Applications, Art, Performing Arts, Home Science, Cookery, Fashion Designing, Physical Education, Technical Drawing Applications, Yoga, and Environmental Applications. All subjects have components of internal assessment, that are carried out by schools, on the basis of assignments/project work, practicals and coursework. There is 20% weightage for internal assessment in group I and II and 50% weightage for group III.

In subjects where there are more than one paper (e.g., Science), the marks obtained in the subject are calculated by taking the average of all the papers in the subject. Candidates appearing for the examination have to study six subjects, with one to three papers in each subject. For subject HC&G the paper 1 consists of History & Civics and paper 2 consists of Geography. Science consists of three papers each for Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. This makes for a total of eight to eleven papers, depending on the subjects. SSC results are taken from best five of six subjects (out of which English marks is compulsory)

In 2013, a 20-year-old Indian student studying in the US, Debarghya Das, claimed in his personal blog to have downloaded the ICSE scores for over one hundred thousand students by scraping the board's website. His analysis of the data showed interesting patterns in the marking system, suggesting that the marks were rounded off with no student getting an odd numbered mark as the result of an examination. Further analysis of the data however showed that this was purely due to the marking scheme where the maximum mark for most questions was even numbered and that the cause for any alarm or suspicion was unfounded.

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