The 40 Marks Nobody Is Studying For
Every year we sit with a parent holding a Class 10 pre-board paper, and the conversation goes the same way.
"She knows the chapters. I've tested her myself. So how is this 68?"
We turn to Section E, the case-based questions. Twelve marks. She has scored four. Then Section A, where three assertionreasoning
items have gone wrong even though she can explain both statements correctly if you ask her out loud.
Nothing is missing from her knowledge. What is missing is a skill that the syllabus does not name and most revision never
touches.
Half the board paper is now made of these questions. In Class 10 that is 40 marks out of 80, in every main subject. This piece
explains what they are, shows you what they actually look like, and gives you a way to train for them between now and
February.
What "competency-based" means in practice
CBSE defines competency-focused questions as MCQs, case-based questions, source-based integrated questions "or any other
type" that test application rather than recall. That definition is broad enough to be unhelpful, so here is the operational
version:
A competency-based question puts a familiar concept inside an unfamiliar wrapper and asks the student to find
it.
The concept is always from the syllabus. Nothing is out of course. The difficulty is entirely in the retrieval — a student who has
only ever met the concept in the form the textbook presented it does not recognise it when it arrives dressed as a
shopkeeper's ledger or a rainfall table.
That is why more revision does not fix this. Revision reinforces the textbook wrapper. It makes the problem slightly worse.
The four types, with real examples
1. Case-based questions (usually 4 marks, Section E)
A short scenario, then sub-questions.
A milk vendor sells milk in cylindrical cans of height 35 cm and radius 10 cm. He fills the cans completely and delivers to 4 houses
each morning. One morning a can develops a leak and loses milk at 200 cm³ per minute.
(i) Find the volume of one full can.
(ii) How much milk does he deliver each morning, in litres?
(iii) If the leak starts when the can is full, how long before it is half empty?
Every part is Class 10 mensuration. What defeats students is the third part, which requires them to notice that "half empty"
means half the volume, convert units, and divide — three ordinary steps that nobody rehearsed together.
Where marks are lost: unit conversion, and answering (ii) without carrying forward the value from (i).
2. Source-based questions (Social Science, English)
An extract, a cartoon, a graph, a table of data, followed by interpretation.
Study the passage and answer: "The new industrial towns grew faster than the systems that were supposed to serve them.
Between 1850 and 1880, the population of one such town trebled while the number of public water taps rose by less than a third."
(i) What does the passage suggest about urban planning in this period?
(ii) Name one likely consequence for public health.
There is no line in the textbook that answers this. The marks come from reading the given text and reasoning from it. A
student trained to hunt for the memorised paragraph will write something adjacent and score one out of three.
Where marks are lost: answering from the chapter instead of from the source.
3. Assertion-reasoning (1 mark, Section A)
Assertion (A): Plants placed in a dark room for 48 hours give a negative starch test.
Reason (R): Chlorophyll absorbs light energy.
(a) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
(b) Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
(c) A is true, R is false
(d) A is false, R is true
Most students pick (a). Both statements are true, and both concern photosynthesis, so it feels right. But R explains why
chlorophyll matters, not why the starch test is negative — the actual reason is the absence of light preventing photosynthesis.
The answer is (b).
Where marks are lost: stopping after checking that both statements are true. The second question — does R explain A? —
is a separate question and it is the one being marked.
A student who gets four of these wrong has lost four marks without making a single factual error.
4. Integrated questions
One problem drawing on two or three chapters. A geometry question needing trigonometry to complete. A Science question
crossing chemistry into biology. A Social Science question spanning history and economics.
Where marks are lost: chapter-by-chapter revision. A student who finishes Chapter 6 and never touches it again alongside
Chapter 11 has no practice at the join.
Why this cannot be fixed in January
Recall is fast to build. Application is slow. A student can memorise thirty reactions in a fortnight; learning to spot the reaction
inside an unfamiliar paragraph takes months of repeated exposure.
This is the single strongest argument for starting board preparation in August rather than November. Not because there is
more syllabus — there is not — but because the competency skill accumulates at a fixed, unhurried rate and cannot be
compressed.
A training method that works
Six habits, in order of how much they return.
1. One case study a day, from the day the chapter is taught. Not saved for revision. The same day the concept is
learnt, in its ordinary form and then in a wrapper. Ten minutes.
2. Solve CBSE sample papers, not just textbook exercises. The sample question papers published on
cbseacademic.nic.in are written by the people who set the pattern. They are the most accurate available model of Section E.
Every past-year paper from the last four years is also worth doing, because the competency style has been stable since 2023-
24.
3. Make the student underline the data in the case before writing anything. A physical habit. Numbers, units, and
the thing being asked. It takes fifteen seconds and prevents most of the arithmetic disasters.
4. Train assertion-reasoning as a two-step check. Is A true? Is R true? Then, separately: does R explain A? Written out as
three ticks, every time, until it is automatic.
5. Mix chapters in every practice set. Once a week, a set that draws from four different chapters with no labels. This is
uncomfortable and that is the point.
6. Time it. Three hours for 80 marks is roughly two and a quarter minutes per mark. A four-mark case study deserves about
nine minutes and no more. Students who have never timed themselves routinely spend twenty on one case and abandon a
five-mark long answer.
What parents can do without teaching anything
You do not need to know the syllabus to help here.
Ask your child to explain one case-based question to you at dinner. Not to solve it — to explain what it is asking and why. If
they can narrate the question clearly, they can almost always solve it. If they cannot, you have found the gap, and it is a
comprehension gap rather than a content gap.
Second, look at their practice papers for blanks. Blanks in a no-negative-marking exam are pure loss and they usually signal
time mismanagement, not ignorance.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of the CBSE 2027 paper is competency-based? Fifty percent, in both Class 10 and Class 12. A further
20% is select-response MCQs and the remaining 30% is conventional short and long answers.
Are competency-based questions out of syllabus? No. The concepts are entirely within the prescribed syllabus. Only the
presentation is unfamiliar.
How many case-based questions are in the Class 10 Maths paper? Three, of four marks each, in Section E — twelve
marks in total. Science follows the same structure.
Is there negative marking on assertion-reasoning questions? No. CBSE board papers carry no negative marking, so a
reasoned guess is always better than a blank.
How early should a student start practising these? From the day each chapter is taught. Application skill builds slowly
and does not respond well to compression in the final two months.
How we handle this at INACADEMICS
Our CBSE batches run at four to eight students, which means a teacher reads the working, not just the answer. On
competency questions that distinction matters more than anywhere else in the paper — the difference between a student who
guessed correctly and one who reasoned correctly is invisible in a mark and obvious in a script.
Every topic in our board batches closes with a case-based set built on that topic, and January is a full mock cycle on CBSE
sample-paper patterns with separate Section A and Section E drills. We have been coaching board students in Hyderabad
since 2009.
INACADEMICS — Kokapet, Hyderabad
CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE and IB coaching for Grades 8–12 in batches of 4–8 students. Established 2009.
Related reading
The CBSE 2027 Board Paper, Decoded: What Actually Changed
From August to February: A Month-by-Month Board Plan for CBSE 2027
Two Board Exams in 2027: How Class 10 Parents Should Plan February and May
Prepared by the CBSE faculty at INACADEMICS, Kokapet, Hyderabad. Exam pattern details are based on the CBSE curriculum framework for the 2026–27 academic session.
Verify all schedules at cbse.gov.in and cbseacademic.nic.in.