NEW DELHI: Lakhs of students Saturday sat for the Class X and XII exams conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). While there are 7,65,095 candidates for the Class X exam, 5,48,815 students have registered for the Class XII exam.

While giving this information an official spokesman said that the total number of registered candidates marks an eight per cent increase over the number of students last year. Over 12 lakh students had appeared in the exams last year. While Class XII students will take the chemistry examinations, Class X will sit for information technology.

About 2,500 physically-challenged students have been registered for this year's exams. They include 373 visually-challenged students in Class X and 214 such candidates in Class XII.

The Board has set up 2,624 centres for Class X and 2,394 centres for Class XII students. There are about 18,000 candidates from foreign countries. In Delhi region of the Board, 2,19,796 students have registered for the Class X exam, while there are 1,60,414 students for the Class XII exam.

For the first time, 20 per cent of the questions will be based on 'high-order thinking skills' as prescribed by the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), the guiding document for preparation of NCERT textbooks.