New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to introduce High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) question paper for class X and XII examinations commencing from March 1, this year.

Explaining the details, CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly told that about 10 per cent of questions will be very short answer type and about 20 per cent of questions will be designed to assess HOTS.

"This marks a paradigm shift in our pattern of assessing the students... The typology of the question paper is different,'' he added.

While for 7.65 lakhs students, appearing for the class 10 examinations, the HOTS pattern will be implemented in all subjects, question papers for 10 chosen subjects for XII standard students- comprising of more than 5.4 lakhs - will be based on the new design. These ten subjects include Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Business Studies, Accountancy, Economics, Political Science and History.

"The aim of the new pattern is to develop the critical thinking and analytical skills of the pupils... Besides testing understanding of information, the focus will be on measuring students' abilities to reason, justify and evaluate information," Mr Ganguly said.

Meanwhile, CBSE, from 2008 onwards is giving students five chances to clear their paper through compartment examinations.

"Till now we used to provide only 3 opportunities to the students to clear a paper but now we have increased it to five," Ganguly added.

While the class X examinations will be held from March 1 to 27, the class XII examinations will be conducted from March 1 to April 2.