New Delhi, April 24: Complaints from students about tough or out-of-syllabus questions in their Class XII board papers will not fetch them any extra marks, beginning from this year's exams.

All the country's 30-odd national and state school boards today decided to junk the decades-old practice many of them followed of artificially inflating scores through what they called "moderation".

At the meeting, organised by the human resource development ministry, the boards also agreed to adopt the science and mathematics curricula and textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

Such uniformity, board officials and school principals said, would prepare students better countrywide for national-level competitive exams.

The abolition of moderation, they said, would lead to a level playing field. Currently, students from state boards that don't practise moderation find themselves at a disadvantage during admission to general college courses or while meeting the board-score-based eligibility criteria for professional entrance tests.

Grace marks will continue to be awarded to pupils falling just short of the pass mark in any paper but, unlike now, the mark sheet will mention the extra marks awarded.

"The decision to end moderation is good for students from Manipur. We don't follow moderation," said L. Mahendra Singh, chairperson of the Council of Higher Secondary Education, Manipur.

He said that about half the country's school boards followed the practice of moderation.

The national-level Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which has been doing it for a decade, had proposed the scrapping of the moderation system last December.

In certain papers, particularly mathematics and physics, the CBSE awarded up to 15 per cent extra marks, subject to a ceiling of 95 marks in the paper, to offset the hurdle of tough or out-of-syllabus questions.

This meant that a student who had obtained 80 per cent could in principle reach 95 per cent through moderation while a more accomplished peer, who had already secured 95 per cent without any prop, was denied any extra mark.

Many academics had highlighted this to say the moderation system tended to victimise the better students and reward the less deserving.

The practice of moderation had led to a more than twenty-fold rise in the number of CBSE students securing 95 per cent or more between 2008 and 2014.

Some Delhi University colleges had begun announcing initial cut-offs of 100 per cent marks during admission to certain subjects.

Jyoti Bose, principal of Springdales School Dhaula Kuan in Delhi, said if moderation was abolished, the boards must take care to ensure that the examinees have no complaints about the questions.

"Moderation is not followed anywhere in the world except India," Bose said.

As for any flawed and unanswerable question in a mathematics or physics paper, say, board officials said marks would continue to be awarded to those who attempt it.

A representative of a state board criticised the decision to show the grace marks on the mark sheet, saying this would "stigmatise" the examinee.

But V.K. Banga, chairperson of the Indian Public School Conference, an association of top private schools, welcomed the decision.

"If the grace marks are shown, the students will be more serious about their studies,' Banga said.

A CBSE student can hope for a maximum of three grace marks to help her reach the pass mark of 33 in a paper.

Sunaina Tomar, principal secretary for primary and secondary education in Gujarat, said the state board would soon adopt the NCERT's mathematics and science textbooks but would prefer its own social science books, enriched by local content.