How to Make a Question Paper: Blueprint, Marking Scheme and a Ready Template for Coaching Tests

What a good question paper does

A question paper is a measuring tool. If it is badly made, the marks tell you very little. The University Grants Commission (UGC) says this plainly in its 2019 report on evaluation reforms: the term-end question paper usually tests only memory recall, and the way a paper is set reflects on the academic quality of the institution.

The same report gives a simple test of balance. An average student should not find it hard to get a passing grade, but the paper should be a real challenge for good students, with high scores getting harder and harder to reach. Keep that sentence in mind at every step below.

For a coaching centre, a good paper does four jobs:

• It covers what you taught, in the right proportion, and not only the chapters the paper setter likes.
• It checks more than memory: understanding, using a method, and reasoning.
• It is marked the same way by every teacher, because the marking scheme is written down.
• It tells you something useful afterwards: which topics the batch has not understood and which questions were badly written.

Step 1: Decide the purpose, marks and time

Write these five things at the top of a page before anything else. They change every later choice.

If you prepare students for a board exam, a full mock paper should copy that board's latest pattern. CBSE, for example, publishes a sample question paper and a marking scheme for each Class X subject; its page for the 2025-26 exam lists both for every subject. Patterns change, so download the current one rather than relying on an old paper or a blog summary. For your own weekly and monthly tests, you have more freedom, and the blueprint below is how you use it well.

How often to test is your call. The UGC report suggests class tests two to three times in a semester, including a make-up test for students who miss one. Many coaching centres test more often than that with short quizzes, which is fine; just do not make every small quiz a full exam.

Step 2: Make the question paper blueprint

A question paper blueprint is a table that decides where the marks go before any question exists. The UGC report recommends that an exam blueprint be prepared so that the paper includes all types and levels of questions and samples the syllabus properly. It also says papers should include essay, short-answer and objective questions, and test all levels of thinking.

A blueprint has three parts:

1. Weightage to topics. Share the total marks between chapters. A fair rule of thumb is to follow the teaching time: a chapter that took twice as many classes usually deserves about twice the marks.
2. Weightage to question types. Decide how many MCQs, short answers and long answers, and the marks for each.
3. Weightage to thinking levels. Decide how many marks test remembering, understanding, applying and higher reasoning (see Step 3).

Here is the filled blueprint for our worked example: a 40-mark, 90-minute Class 10 maths unit test on three topics. The numbers in each cell are the number of questions, with marks in brackets.

Check the arithmetic both ways: each row adds to the topic total, and each column adds to the type total. If the two grand totals do not match, there is a mistake in the table. Fix it now; it is much harder to fix after the questions are written.

Step 3: Plan the thinking levels with Bloom's taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy is the usual way to sort questions by the kind of thinking they need. CBSE's Handbook for Teachers explains that Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues described six levels in 1956: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, ordered from simple to complex. Lorin Anderson later revised it, changing the names to verbs, such as remember, understand and apply, and slightly rearranging them.

The handbook also asks teachers to state objectives as what students will be able to do, using clear action verbs, not vague phrases like "be familiar with". That habit helps a lot when you write questions, because the verb tells you the level.

In our 40-mark test, the marks are shared like this: Remember 8 marks, Understand 10, Apply 14, Analyse and evaluate 8. That is a choice, not a rule. For a first test on a new chapter, you might put more weight on remembering and understanding. For a revision test near the exam, put more on applying and reasoning. What matters is that you decide on purpose and write it down.

A difficulty level is not the same as a thinking level. A recall question can be hard (an obscure fact) and an application question can be easy (a routine sum). Tag each question with both. In our example we also planned roughly 12 marks easy, 20 marks average and 8 marks hard, so that an average student can pass and a strong student is still stretched.

Step 4: Write the questions to fit the blueprint

Now make a question list: one line per question, with its number, topic, type, marks and level. Write each question only when you know which cell of the blueprint it fills. This stops the most common problem, a paper full of easy recall MCQs from one chapter.

Add up the Level column: Remember 8, Understand 10, Apply 14, Analyse and evaluate 8, total 40. It matches the plan in Step 3.

Sample questions from this paper

• Q1 (Remember, 1 mark): The degree of the polynomial 4x³ − 2x + 7 is (a) 1 (b) 2 (c) 3 (d) 7.
• Q2 (Understand, 1 mark): If α and β are the zeroes of x² − 5x + 6, then α + β is (a) −5 (b) 5 (c) 6 (d) −6.
• Q7 (Apply, 1 mark): The pair of equations 2x + 3y = 7 and 4x + 6y = 14 has (a) exactly one solution (b) no solution (c) infinitely many solutions (d) exactly two solutions.
• Q19 (Apply, 3 marks): Solve 2x² − 7x + 3 = 0 by splitting the middle term.
• Q20 (Analyse and evaluate, 4 marks): A student writes that x² + 4 = 0 has two real roots, 2 and −2. Find the mistake, explain it using the discriminant, and say what kind of roots the equation has.

Notice the wrong options. In Q1, 7 is the constant term, a real confusion students have. In Q2, −5 catches students who forget the sign rule. Wrong options built from real mistakes tell you what went wrong, not just that something did.

How to write good MCQs and short questions

Most weekly tests in coaching centres are mainly MCQs, so it pays to write them well. The University of Waterloo's Centre for Teaching Excellence gives clear rules, and they match what experienced paper setters do:

• Put the full problem in the stem. A student should be able to answer without looking at the options.
• Use three to five options. Waterloo notes that three-option questions work about as well as four or five. A study of 800 MCQs at Arabian Gulf University also recommended three or four options rather than five, because it cuts down options that hardly anyone chooses.
• Have one clearly best answer. Avoid options that are partly right.
• Make wrong options believable and similar in length and style to the right one. For understanding questions, build them from common student mistakes.
• Avoid "all of the above" and "none of the above". Students can guess the first from partial knowledge, and the second only shows they rejected the others.
• Avoid negatives like "Which is NOT...". If you must use one, put the word in capitals or bold.
• Avoid absolute words like always and never, which students learn to rule out.
• Spread the right answers evenly across a, b, c and d, and arrange number options in order.

For short and long answers:

• Say exactly what you want: "Solve by splitting the middle term" is clearer than "Solve".
• Match the marks to the work. A 3-mark question should need about three clear steps.
• State units, the number of points expected, or a word limit where it matters.
• Do not copy a textbook example word for word; change the numbers or the context, or you are testing memory of that page.
• Write one or two questions in a real-life context (a fee, a distance, a shop bill) for the higher levels. CBSE's 2019 handbook noted that its 2019-20 Class X sample papers in four subjects had at least two questions testing critical thinking and creativity, as case-based or passage-based questions.

Step 5: Write the answer key and marking scheme together

Write the answer to every question as you write the question. If you cannot write a clean answer in the time a student would have, the question is too long or unclear. The UGC report recommends rubrics and model answers for marking descriptive questions, so that marking is less subjective, and says marking criteria should be made known to students.

For maths and science, use step marks. Here is the scheme for Q19 (3 marks):

For a theory answer, list the points you expect and the marks for each, and add a line on what to do with answers that are correct but phrased differently. Also decide how to treat a mistake carried forward: if a student makes an error in step 1 and then works correctly with the wrong number, do they lose only the step 1 mark? Write the rule down so two teachers give the same marks.

Two more good habits from the UGC report: ask students to write a roll number or code, not their name, to reduce bias in marking; and discuss answers in class after returning the papers.

Step 6: Lay out the paper

A clear layout saves students time and saves you questions on the day. Use this format and keep it the same for every test, so students know where to look.

• Put the marks in brackets at the right edge of every question.
• Go from easier to harder within each section, so weaker students do not give up on question 2.
• Keep a question and its diagram or options on the same page.
• If you give a choice, make both options the same topic, level and length. A choice between an easy and a hard question is not a choice.
• Print one copy and read it as a student before you print the rest.

Step 7: Review the paper before you print

No paper should go out with only the setter having read it. The UGC report calls moderation at every stage, including paper setting, essential, and says the moderator should not be the person who set or assessed the work. In a small centre, that just means a second teacher reads the paper and the key. Use this checklist:

1. Does every question fit a cell of the blueprint, and do the totals match?
2. Is every question inside the syllabus that was actually taught?
3. Can every question be answered in the time? The checker should solve the paper and time themselves.
4. Is there exactly one right answer to each MCQ, and is the key correct?
5. Are there spelling mistakes, wrong numbers, missing units or unclear words?
6. Does any question give away the answer to another?
7. Are the right answers to the MCQs spread across a, b, c and d?
8. Is the marking scheme clear enough that a third teacher would give the same marks?

Mistakes still happen, even at the national level. CBSE has a written policy for errors noticed after a paper is given: it collects observations from subject experts on the day of the exam and from schools within 24 hours, and passes them to the group preparing the marking scheme so the students' interest is protected. Copy the idea in your centre: if a question turns out to be wrong, decide fairly, for example by giving everyone the marks or removing the question from the total, and tell the students what you decided.

Step 8: After the test, check which questions worked

This is the step most teachers skip, and it is the one that makes the next paper better. Two simple numbers tell you a lot about each objective question.

Difficulty index: the share of students who got the question right. The UGC report defines it this way. A study of MCQs at Arabian Gulf University treated 30 to 70 percent as acceptable, below 30 percent as difficult and above 70 percent as easy.

Discrimination index: how well a question separates students who know the topic from those who do not. The usual method takes the top 27 percent and bottom 27 percent of students by total score. Subtract the number in the bottom group who got the question right from the number in the top group who got it right, and divide by the size of one group. The same study treated 0.35 or more as excellent, 0.2 to 0.34 as acceptable and below 0.2 as poor.

Here is an example for a batch of 40 students. 27 percent of 40 is about 11, so the top group and bottom group have 11 students each.

Also look at the wrong options. A 2024 study in BMC Medical Education counted an option as non-functional if fewer than 5 percent of students chose it. If nobody picks option (d), it is not doing any work; replace it with a more believable mistake next time.

With a small batch of 15 or 20 students, these numbers jump around a lot. Use them as a hint to look at a question again, not as a verdict. Over several tests, the pattern becomes clearer.

Build a question bank as you go

Every good question you write and check is worth keeping. The UGC report calls question banks a much-needed reform and sets out what each question should carry: an answer key, its difficulty level, the topic it tests, the learning outcome, and its discrimination ability. It suggests changing about 20 percent of the questions every year so the bank stays fresh, and a review and pilot step before questions go in.

For a coaching centre, a spreadsheet is enough to start. Use one row per question with these columns: question text, answer, topic, type, marks, Bloom level, difficulty (easy, average, hard), date used, and the difficulty and discrimination numbers from the last time it was used. After a year you can build a new paper in minutes by filtering the sheet to fit your blueprint, and you avoid giving the same paper to the next batch.

The UGC report also suggests drawing part of a paper from the bank and part fresh, in a fixed proportion such as 70:30. That keeps quality steady and still stops students from simply memorising last year's paper.

CBSE itself publishes question banks for Class X English, Mathematics and Science on its academic website. Use such official material for practice, and write your own questions for your tests, so that your tests show what your students can do, not what they remember from a website.

Putting tests online on Sikhami's free LMS

Many institutes now run the objective part of a test online and the written part on paper. Sikhami is a social network in India for every kind of learning, and coaching institutes and tuition centres get a free LMS on it: video courses with tests and certificates, classroom batches, attendance, fees and receipts.

On Sikhami, a test sits inside a video course: you add it in any section of the curriculum, for example after the lectures of one chapter. Questions are multiple choice with one correct answer, and you can write an explanation that students see after they submit. You set a pass mark and, if you want, a time limit. Answers are marked automatically, students can take a test again, and the course analytics show a table of test results.

That suits chapter practice tests built from your question bank: the MCQ section of your blueprint goes online, students see the explanation for every wrong answer, and you spend class time on the written questions. What it does not do: there is no negative marking, each question has one right answer, and there are no written-answer questions, so long answers and step marking stay on paper. The steps are in our help article on course tests and certificates, and our guide to online exam software covers full online exams in more depth.

Common mistakes, and when this is too much

When a full blueprint is too much: a five-question oral check at the end of a class, or a ten-minute daily quiz, does not need all of this. Keep those quick and use them to teach, as our guide on formative assessment explains. Use the full method for tests whose marks you record, share with parents in a student progress report, or use to decide anything about a student.

When this is not for you at all: if your students sit a board or entrance exam, a full mock must follow that exam's latest official pattern and marking scheme. Use the steps here for your weekly and monthly tests, and take the mock pattern from the board's own published sample paper.