CBSE is retiring Maths Basic and adding Maths Advanced. Those point opposite ways.

For years, a school with a student who was never going to study Mathematics after Class 10 had somewhere to put them. Mathematics Basic existed as the easier of two board papers, and choosing it was a normal, low-drama conversation in Class 9.

That option is being withdrawn.

From the academic session 2026–27, the scheme of two-levels, i.e. Mathematics Basic and Mathematics Standard examination, will be discontinued.

In its place, Mathematics and Science each now run at two levels — and the new second level is not an easier paper. It is a harder one.

• 80+ 25

  marks: one common paper every student sits, plus an optional Advanced paper of higher-order questions.

• 0

  Advanced marks are added to the aggregate. The paper cannot raise or lower a student's total.

• 2028

  is when the first cohort meets this at a board examination. What you decide now runs for two years.

The two schemes point in opposite directions

This is the part worth being precise about, because both arrangements are called "two levels" and they do opposite work.

So the support route is closing and an extension route is opening. If your Class 9 team has been discussing "the two levels" all term, it is worth checking which scheme each person has in mind.

There is one more wrinkle, and it lands squarely on a vice-principal:

students of Class-X in 2026–27 will only continue under the existing scheme and may opt for Mathematics Basic

Your current Class 10 keeps Basic. Your current Class 9 does not. For this one year you are running both schemes at once, in adjacent classrooms, with the same Maths department answering questions about both.

What the Advanced papers actually are

The structure, from the Scheme of Studies:

Two rules attached to it are easy to miss and both matter to parents:

the marks obtained in the Advanced Examination shall not be added to the overall aggregate or total score

A candidate securing 50% and above marks for the optional Advanced Examination shall have the following recorded in the marksheet: The Advanced Level has been successfully cleared. (This text is tentative and may vary). In case a candidate secures less than the prescribed criteria, no reference to the Advanced Level shall be reflected in the marksheet.

Read that carefully. A student who sits Advanced and scores below the threshold loses nothing — the marksheet simply stays silent. There is no downside on paper, which means the honest answer to "should my child take it?" is almost always "there is no risk in trying", and you should expect uptake to be higher than your Maths department is planning for.

Note also that the parenthesis is CBSE's own. The Board has published the rule while flagging that it has not settled the words that will appear on the certificate.

Finally, the two-level structure does not touch internal assessment:

This two-level structure will not apply to the internal assessments of 20 marks in Mathematics and Science conducted at the school level in Class X.

This is not a revision syllabus

The published Class 9 Advanced books make the staffing question concrete.

Mathematics Advanced: Sets · Logarithms · Relations and Functions · Coordinate Geometry · Combinatorics · Exploring some more Progressions.

Science Advanced: Measurement · Understanding Motion through Experience · Newton's Laws of Motion · The Geometry of Power (Advanced Simple Machines) · Work and Energy · Structure of Atom · Chemical Bonding · Mixtures and Separation of Mixtures · Microscope and Microscopy · Engineering Life: Miracles in Biotechnology.

This characterisation is mine, not CBSE's: several of those Mathematics chapters — Sets, Logarithms, Relations and Functions, Combinatorics — are recognisably Class 11 topics arriving two years early. That is the intent, and it tells you what the teaching load is. A Class 9 Maths teacher comfortable with the standard syllabus is not automatically comfortable teaching Combinatorics to fourteen-year-olds, and this cannot be run as an extra revision period by whoever has a free slot.

The decision is capacity, not selection

The instinct in most schools will be to gate entry — let the HOD nominate who may opt for Advanced. Read the scheme before you build that:

Students can choose none/one/both subject/s at viz., Advanced Level

The choice sits with the student. A school can advise, and should, but a policy that bars a willing student from a paper CBSE offers them is difficult to defend to a parent — particularly one where failure leaves no mark on the record.

Which makes the real question capacity, not selection. Four decisions worth taking to your HODs this month:

1. Where does Advanced teaching physically go? Inside the timetable, as a zero period, or as a weekend arrangement? Each answer has a different cost and a different set of families it excludes.
2. Who teaches it, and what does that person stop doing? Name them. "The Maths department will manage" is not an answer that survives October.
3. What do you tell a parent whose child wants in and whose teacher advises against? Write the sentence now, once, so four teachers do not improvise four different versions of it.
4. How many will you plan for? Given there is no downside to attempting it, plan for more than the HOD's instinct, and decide in advance what happens if half the cohort opts in.

None of this is on a deadline you are currently missing. The first board examination under this scheme is 2028, and the Class 9 assessment this year is school-based. That is precisely why it is worth settling now — the policy you improvise in January is the one this cohort carries into its boards.

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The thing I cannot see from the curriculum documents is how many students actually want this. In your Class 9 this year, has anyone asked about the Advanced papers yet — students, parents, or only the Maths and Science teachers?