Setting the Class 10 half-yearly: the 2026-27 blueprint no longer matches last year's paper

Half-yearlies start in the second week of September in most schools, which means the papers get set in the last fortnight of August, which means what actually happens is that last year's paper is opened, the numbers are changed, and two questions are swapped out.

That is a reasonable way to work in a year when nothing has moved. This is not that year for Class 10. The 2026-27 curriculum changed what the board will examine, and it did it in a way that does not show up as a change in the marks table — which is the only part of the syllabus most schools re-check.

• 3

  topic blocks are in the Class 10 Science syllabus but excluded from the year-end paper.

• 54 / 75%

  Recall-and-understanding share for Mathematics Standard against Basic. Same class, same school, different paper.

• 0

  model papers published for 2026-27 as of 14 August. The newest set on the academics site is 2025-26.

The marks table did not move. What sits underneath it did.

For Class 10 Science, code 086, the 2026-27 unit weightages are identical to 2025-26:

Compare the two documents on that table and you would conclude nothing changed. Read the units themselves and three blocks of content have come back into the syllabus carrying a restriction:

The following topics are included in the syllabus but will be assessed only formatively to reinforce understanding without adding to summative assessments.

That box now sits over Periodic Classification of Elements in Unit I, over the Evolution topics in Unit II, and over Motor, Electromagnetic Induction and Electric Generator in Unit IV. Periodic Classification and the motor group did not appear in the Class 10 syllabus at all in 2025-26; the Evolution topics — speciation, fossils, human evolution — are newly itemised this year. They are there to be taught, and explicitly not to be examined in the year-end paper. The Note for Teachers repeats it:

The topics Periodic Classification of Elements; Heredity and Evolution; and Electric Effects of Electric Current will not be assessed in the year-end examination.

Which brings up something you should know before you set a paper: that note and the syllabus body do not agree. The body treats Heredity as ordinary examinable content — Mendel's contribution, laws for inheritance of traits, sex determination — and puts only the Evolution topics inside the formative box. The note names "Heredity and Evolution" as one thing and excludes the lot.

My guess is that the note is carrying over last year's chapter name, which was literally "Heredity and Evolution" even though the content listed under it was only the heredity half. That is a guess, and a guess is not something to set a paper on. What I would do is set Heredity questions on the half-yearly, since the syllabus body is the more specific statement, and write to your regional office for a clarification in the same week — you want the answer in writing before February, not an argument about it in April.

There is no single school-wide rule, because there is no single framework

The most common instruction I hear given to a staffroom is a percentage: "make it forty percent competency-based." It cannot be followed, because CBSE does not use one competency vocabulary across subjects. In the same Class 10, in the same week:

Science names its bands Demonstrate Knowledge and Understanding, Application of Knowledge/Concepts, and Formulate, Analyze, Evaluate and Create, and gives percentages. Mathematics uses the Bloom ladder — Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating, Creating — and gives marks. They are not the same instrument, and the two Mathematics codes are further apart from each other than Science is from either.

A Basic candidate sitting a paper built to the Standard proportions is being handed a paper with twice the higher-order load the board will give them. Same teacher, same room, usually the same question paper. That is the single most common defect I would look for first.

The blueprint, worked through

Here is the method end to end for one subject. Class 10 Science, a half-yearly covering Units I and III completely and roughly half of Unit II.

1. Scale the units to what you have actually taught

   Do not use the board's 25/25/12/13/05 directly; it describes a paper covering everything. Take the board weight of each unit, keep the proportion, and rebase to your paper's total. Units I (25) and III (12) complete, plus half of Unit II (12.5), is 49.5 board marks. Rebased to 80 that is 40.4, 20.2 and 19.4 — round to 40, 20 and 20 so the paper totals 80. The ratio is what you are preserving, not the second decimal.

2. Apply the competency split before you write a single question

   Science is 50/30/20. On 80 marks: 40 marks of knowledge and understanding, 24 of application, 16 of formulate-analyse-evaluate-create. Write those three numbers at the top of the page. Every question you add subtracts from one of them.

3. Use CBSE's own verbs to classify, not your instinct

   The curriculum prints the list, and it is the least-used useful page in the document:

   • Demonstrate Knowledge and Understanding — state, name, list, identify, define, suggest, describe, outline, summarize
   • Application of Knowledge/Concepts — calculate, illustrate, show, adapt, explain, distinguish
   • Formulate, Analyze, Evaluate and Create — interpret, analyze, compare, contrast, examine, evaluate, discuss, construct

   A question that opens with "state" is not a higher-order question because the content is difficult. This is where most self-assessed blueprints are wrong, and it is the cheapest thing to fix.

4. Spread across the question types CBSE actually names

   For Science those are: very short answer including objective and assertion–reasoning; short answer; long answer; and source-, case-, passage-based or integrated questions. That last category is where the higher-order marks are easiest to place honestly, and it is usually the one a cloned paper is thinnest on.

5. Build in the internal choice

   Approximately 33%, per the design. Decide it at blueprint stage, because retrofitting choice onto a finished paper is how you end up offering a choice between a 3-mark recall question and a 3-mark analysis question, which is not a choice.

6. Check the exclusions last

   Walk the finished paper against the three formative-only blocks. A question on Mendeleev's table or on the electric motor is not wrong to teach this year. It is wrong to put marks on it in a paper that is meant to rehearse the board's.

What is CBSE's and what is yours

Be clear with your staff about which half of this is compulsory, because they will be asked.

The Question Paper Design governs the board's year-end paper. CBSE does not publish a blueprint for a school's half-yearly and does not require you to use one. Mirroring it is a choice — a good one, because the half-yearly is the only full-length rehearsal most students get before February, and because a pen-and-paper periodic test is a scored component of the 20 internal marks in both subjects.

But it is your choice, not a compliance obligation. Anyone who tells a parent that CBSE mandates the half-yearly pattern is inventing a rule, and that is a worse habit than a badly weighted paper.

Before the papers go for printing

1. Check which Mathematics paper each cohort is sitting. Standard and Basic are 54% and 75% recall-and-understanding. One paper for both is the default and it is wrong for one of the two groups.
2. Print the exclusion list and put it on the paper-setter's desk, not in a circular. Three blocks, Class 10 Science.
3. Get Heredity clarified in writing and do not let it stay an open staffroom argument until the board paper settles it.
4. Classify by CBSE's verbs and count the marks in each band before the paper is typed. Ten minutes at blueprint stage, an hour of rework after.
5. Decide the 33% internal choice at blueprint stage, in matched pairs.

None of this is a deadline. It is the last quiet fortnight before the papers are set, and the blueprint is the cheapest point in the whole cycle to fix a paper — far cheaper than moderating a result you do not trust in October.

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The part I genuinely cannot see from the documents is what your school does when the two Mathematics cohorts sit down. Do your Standard and Basic candidates get different half-yearly papers, or the same one with the difficult questions marked optional — and who made that call, the HOD or the exam coordinator?