How to Make a CBSE Report Card (Format + Common Mistakes)

CBSE publishes the assessment scheme through circulars and curriculum documents: which subjects are taught, how marks are split between theory and internal assessment, and how grades are assigned in the board classes. It does not hand schools a printable template for every class. So the report card layout is your decision, but the content must be consistent with the scheme in force for that class and that year.

Assessment rules for the early classes have shifted in recent years under NEP 2020, with greater emphasis on competency-based learning and descriptive feedback in the foundational stages. Always check the latest CBSE circulars for your class band before finalising a design. The page for the CBSE school software outlines what a system should hold, but the circular is the authority.

1. Header: school name, affiliation number, address, academic session, and the document title.
2. Student details: name, class and section, roll number, admission number, date of birth, parents’ names, and sometimes the APAAR ID or other identifiers if the school chooses to show them.
3. Scholastic areas: subjects with marks and grades for each assessment (periodic tests, half-yearly and annual exams, internal assessment) and the totals.
4. Co-scholastic areas: art education, health and physical education, work education, discipline or personal qualities, graded descriptively or on a scale.
5. Attendance: working days and days present, shown by term or for the year.
6. Remarks: teacher and principal remarks, and a result or promotion statement.
7. Signatures and date: class teacher, principal, and parent acknowledgment.

For younger classes many schools replace marks with descriptive comments or the holistic progress card; see our guide to the NEP holistic progress card.

For the secondary classes CBSE has used a 9-point grading scale in which a student’s marks in each subject are mapped to grades from A1 to E2. Schools show the grade, and often the marks as well, on the report card. Verify the current table in the latest circular before you print; the commonly used bands are below.

In Classes 9 and 10, subjects typically carry 80 marks of theory and 20 marks of internal assessment, though some skill subjects differ. Make sure the report card follows the split used for your subjects rather than assuming 100 for all.

Step 1: freeze the assessment plan

List each assessment for the year (for example two periodic tests, a half-yearly and an annual) with its maximum marks and its weight. Get the principal to sign this off before the first mark is entered, not after.

Step 2: set up subjects per class

Include electives and language choices. A student taking Sanskrit instead of French must appear correctly on the card, or the school will print dozens of wrong ones.

Step 3: collect marks in one format

Ask teachers to enter marks directly in the system or in one standard sheet. Absent should be recorded as absent, not as zero; the two behave differently in totals and in remarks.

Step 4: verify before computing

Run an exception report: marks above maximum, missing entries, students without a subject. Fix these first. It is faster to fix twenty missing marks than to reprint two hundred cards.

Step 5: compute and proof-read a sample

Compute totals, grades, ranks if the school uses them, and attendance. Print five cards from different sections and have a class teacher check each against her own register.

Step 6: release in an order

Share with the principal, then teachers, then parents, with a date. Keep a record of what was published and when.

• Treating absent as zero. It lowers totals and ranks unfairly and complicates remarks.
• Rounding in the wrong place. Decide whether you round each component or only the final total, and apply it uniformly.
• Grade bands applied inconsistently. A boundary such as 90 or 91 should map to one grade across every subject. Never hard-code bands in different sheets.
• Wrong attendance basis. Different counts of working days per term lead to different percentages. Use one calendar.
• Name and date-of-birth errors. These matter for board registration and certificates. Verify against admission records and the birth certificate, and fix them in the master record once.
• Late changes after printing. Lock marks after verification and require an approved correction note to unlock.
• Co-scholastic grades left blank. Parents notice, and the card looks unfinished.

A school that keeps marks, attendance and student details in one system avoids most of these, since the card is assembled from live records. Takshiva’s report card software uses a single grading service and produces PDF report cards from entered marks; whatever tool you use, the principle is one source for each fact.

A report card is a conversation starter, not a verdict. Pair the release with a parent-teacher meeting where the class teacher can explain the pattern: strengths, subjects needing support and the next steps. Keep comments specific. “Needs to work harder” helps nobody; “Practise word problems for twenty minutes daily” does.

Allow a short window for queries about marks, with a simple process: the parent writes the query, the subject teacher checks the answer script, and any change is approved by the principal and logged. That keeps trust high and the record clean.

Suppose Science in Class 9 carries 80 marks of theory and 20 of internal assessment. A student scores 56 out of 80 in the annual theory paper. Her internal assessment consists of periodic tests (10), notebook work (5) and subject enrichment (5), and she earned 8, 4 and 4, for 16 of 20. Her total is 72 out of 100, which falls in the B1 band of the scale above.

The mistakes appear in the detail. If the school averaged two periodic tests, decide in advance whether to average or take the better of the two, and apply that to every student. If another student was absent for the annual paper because of illness and appeared in a re-test, say whether the re-test marks replace or are capped, and record the approval. Document these rules on a single sheet that every teacher has.

Before releasing the cards, compare three students’ totals by hand against the printout, for example the highest scorer, a mid-ranked student and one on the pass boundary. The boundary cases are where rounding and grade-band errors hide. If all three agree, the rest usually will too.

Co-scholastic and attendance lines

Do not forget them. For co-scholastic areas, set up the grading scale (often A to C) and give teachers brief criteria, such as participation, effort and skill. For attendance, take the figure from the same register the office uses; a card that says 92% while the attendance report says 88% invites a complaint.