CBSE 10th 12th Marksheet 2025: Understanding What Grades Mean

Central Board of Secondary Education, CBSE 10th 12th Marksheet will be made available soon on DigiLocker. The board will also issue a printed copy of the CBSE Marksheet cum Passing Certificate for this year’s results. Here is understanding what CBSE Marksheet contains, importance as well as what the grades given in the marksheet mean.

CBSE Result Update | CBSE 2025 Result Expected Shortly on DigiLocker, results.cbse.nic.in 

CBSE 10th 12th Marksheet cum Passing Certificate

Students and parents may please note that the board has decided to issue a combined marksheet and passing certificate to the students. Earlier, the board used to issue two separate documents. This, however, has now been changed into a single document.

The marksheet cum passing certificate will have

1. Student details including name, parents name, CBSE roll number, gender, date of birth (only in Class 10 but not in Class 12), etc.
2. CBSE Roll Number, Name of Exam and Year of Exam
3. Subjects the student appeared in
4. Marks obtained by students – including internal and external marks
5. Subject wise Grade of the student

The document, please note, is an important academic as well as identity document for students. This will be required for admission to higher secondary, institutes of higher education and also during recruitment and validation throughout the life. Students are hence advised to keep the documents safe.

CBSE Grading System for 10th 12th Result

Apart from the marks, CBSE 10th 12th Marksheet also has grade. This grading system is not based on marks/ percentages but rather relative grading or positional ranking. To understand, let us quickly look at the basic grading systems.

The percentage grading system simply allots a grade to a certain range of marks/ percentage scored. For example, 95 and above get A1 or A+, 90 – 94.99 get A2 or A, 85 – 89.99 get B1 or B + and so on. This system simply converts the marks scored into grades.

CBSE Grading System, however, is based on relative grading and can be considered a positional or subject rank of the child. For the grading system, CBSE simply divides the total number of students who have passed a particular subject into 8 equal groups. This grouping, please remember, is not based on the marks scored by the child but rather the number of students appearing for that group.

CBSE Grade Grid

Let us understand this with an example. Let us assume that 100 students appeared for Class 10 Science Examination. Out of these 96 students passed the examination. The students who do not pass (get 33 per cent marks in the subject) are awarded E grade.

For the grading of those who have passed, the board will place students or rank them from 1 to 96 (based on their marks scored). The top 1/8^th or 12 students (in this case) will get A1 grade, next 12 or ranks 13 to 24 will get A2 grade, next 12 or ranks 25 to 36 will get B1 grade and so on.

Why Grades Vary even when Marks in two subjects are same?

The biggest concern raised by parents is that even though the child has scored same marks in two subjects, the grade is different. For example, say a student scored 75 marks in English and 75 in Hindi. The Grade for English is given as probably B2 while for Hindi it is given as A1.

This happens because the number of students who appeared for Hindi and English may be different. Remember, the grade is based on positional rank of the child. The top 1/8th, hence, may vary for both.

Significance of CBSE Grading System

If CBSE gives marks, then why the grading system? The grading system simply suggests the positional rank of a student in a particular subject. The rationale behind the positional grading is to suggest the child’s relative position vis a vis other students who appeared for that subject.

Essentially, the system divides the child into quartiles and then further divides them into top half and bottom half.

Effectively speaking, A grade means the child is in the Top 25% of all the students who appeared for the said subject, B and C grade divides the child into Middle 50% group while D grade means bottom 25%. The grades, hence, rank the child.

The significance of Grading System becomes particularly important for higher education as well as career planning. Especially students applying to universities abroad can highlight their Grade in a particular subject, highlighting their prowess in one subject.

From a more personal perspective, the grade helps one understand the aptitude of the child for a particular subject. It can be used as an effective tool to understand how well a child is able to understand or grasp a subject vis a vis his/her peers.

Sadly, the grading system is hardly used by the Indian schools that still follow the marks and percentage system. However, the provision is in place and let us hope that the relative grading can be effectively utilised to assess the child holistically.