New Delhi: In a bid to extend more help towards students appearing for the Board exams, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to put answer sheets of last year's toppers on its website from Feb 21.

Terming it as an innovative step, CBSE Chairman, Mr. Ashok Ganguly said, "The answer papers of previous year's toppers from both classes will be placed on the CBSE website. This will give access to the answer papers and students can see why and how the candidate has secured such good marks."

So apart from solving sample papers students will be able to learn the tricks of how to write that perfect answer from toppers, Ganguly added.

Among other initiatives, the CBSE has decided to introduce questions that can evaluate students' thinking skills. The sample papers of this new pattern are available on CBSE website www.cbse.nic.in. All affiliated schools have been informed about the new pattern and teachers have been asked to train their students accordingly.

Ganguly said the board has redesigned the question paper of all the major subjects like mathematics, science, English, and social sciences.

"The new design includes about 10 percent of very short sample questions and about 20 percent questions on High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)," he said.

"It will help gauge students' ability to reason, justify, analyze, process and evaluate information and knowledge. The format of the question paper will have both very short answer type and long answer type questions," he told reporters.

Again, in order to make the evaluation system flawless, the board has given marking schemes in major subjects like Science, commerce, humanities in Class 12 and all subjects for Class 10.

Over 1.3 million students of Classes 10 and 12 will appear for the examinations this year. The exams for both levels will start from March 1.

For the smooth conduct of examinations and marking, the board has appointed school principals as chief nodal supervisors for evaluation purposes.