The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has directed schools to start teaching third languages (R3) from Class 6 immediately. This move comes after the CBSE rolled out major reforms in its scheme of studies, making the third language compulsory in Class 6 from the 2026-27 academic session onwards.
Students of Class 6 in the current academic session will be the first cohort to study a compulsory third language when they will be in Class 10 in 2030-31. The assessment of the third language (R3) will involve a school-based internal assessment in 2031, and not a board examination.
CBSE has asked schools to finalise and notify their respective regional offices of their chosen third language(s) and update the same in its digital Online Affiliated School Information System (OASIS) portal.
The new CBSE secondary school curriculum organises language subjects into three levels—R1, R2 and R3—as part of a structured three-language model. R1 (Language 1) will be the student’s main or strongest language, studied at a higher level, R2 (Language 2) is a different language, studied at a slightly different level.
The third language (R3) will be compulsory from Class 6 starting this academic session 2026-27 and extended progressively to Class 10 by 2030-31. The languages chosen at R1 and R2 levels will be different; the same language cannot be offered simultaneously at more than one level.
CBSE’s changes operationalise ideas first mooted as part of the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023 and are aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
