New Delhi, July 14: Secondary school students under the Central Board of Secondary Education must now study a third language up to Class 10, bringing a major shift to the conventional academic setup. The updated rule applies immediately to the Class 9 batch of 2026-27 and will expand to Class 10 by the next academic year.
“The revised scheme ensures the language study remains compulsory without adding to the pressure of the external written board examinations,” an education official declared regarding the July 10 notice.
The evaluation will rely entirely on school-level internal testing rather than standardized board exams. For senior students, passing this internal test is an absolute prerequisite to secure graduation papers. The policy dictates that schools must arrange timely re-examinations for anyone failing the internal component before final board marks are published.
This policy expands upon the foundational guidelines released on June 29, which brought the three-language formula into the middle school curriculum from Class 6 onward. Under these rules, at least two of the three chosen languages must be indigenous to India. Consequently, students who took up foreign languages alongside English in earlier grades are now required to add a native Indian language to their schedules.
The accelerated timeline has drawn a court challenge aiming to reinstate the older April 9 schedule, which delayed the mandate for older students until the end of the decade. In response to the litigation, the Ministry of Education asserted in a nine-page legal filing that the rollout remains completely valid. Legal representatives stated that because education is a shared subject on the Concurrent List, the central authorities are fully empowered to execute these nationwide changes.
