PTI

New Delhi, Mar 1: CBSE's annual board examinations got underway on Wednesday with more than four lac students appearing for their Class 12 exams in over 2,400 centres across the country and abroad.

A total of 4,54,045 students--2,63,286 boys and 1,90,759 girls--including 6,495 foreign students, appeared for their English paper, kickstarting the month-long examination season with certain new features.

The examinations for Class 10 will begin on Thursday.

Providing a big relief to students, the CBSE has this time restructured certain important question papers and given the examinees an extra time of 15 minutes before each paper as a "cool-off" period.

The Board has restructured Mathematics, Social Science and Science papers of Class 10 and Physics, Business Studies, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Economics and Accountancy question papers for Class 12.

Without changing the number of questions, the Board has rearranged their pattern like reducing the word requirement of long-answer questions so that students can finish their paper in time.

Also, the students will get an additional time of 30 minutes for revising their answer sheets for certain important papers.