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The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said it will scale down the difficulty level of the class 12 mathematics question paper next year after an unusually tough exam drove millions of students to tears and hurt their scores.

The board announced a revamp of the paper’s pattern, introducing short-answer type questions carrying two marks and reducing the number of controversial higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) questions. The HOTS questions will now carry only 10 marks and will be split into two sections of four and six marks. Students will also be given more choice.

Teachers welcomed the move, saying the tough HOTS questions were responsible for raising the difficulty level of the paper this year as they carried substantial weightage. HOTS questions are tricky and for the past two years, they have been exceptionally tough. It is good that they will be restricted to only 10% now, a maths teacher said.

The short-answer type questions will make the paper easier, teachers said. This is the first time that the board has brought in two-mark questions. Shorter questions require less time to solve and will help students in completing the paper on time, the teacher said.

The CBSE categorised 20% of the paper as easy, 60% as average and 20% as difficult. Students depend on their maths scores to boost their grades in the class 12 examination, which is crucial for college entrances where cut-offs regularly touch 98-99%.