Consider the two statements below: A. Examinations are artificial situations…

Concept: Examination reform in Indian pedagogy, as recommended in NCF 2005 and operationalised through Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), rests on two linked ideas: a conventional one-shot, high-stakes examination is designed around the administrative needs of the system, such as uniform grading, ranking and certification, rather than around how an individual child actually learns; and because such exams reward memorised recall under time pressure, they generate performance anxiety, whereas assessing competencies through varied, continuous tools lowers that stress.

Application: Applying this to the two statements:

• Statement A restates the system-centred critique of examinations: they exist mainly for the convenience of the system, such as scheduling, uniform marking and promotion decisions, rather than for the individual learner's pace or way of understanding. This is exactly the position NCF 2005 takes when it calls for making assessment an integral part of teaching-learning rather than an external, system-driven event, so this statement holds.

• Statement B applies the same reform logic to Social Science classrooms, a subject often taught and tested through fact and date recall. Moving emphasis from memorised facts to competencies, such as comparing viewpoints, interpreting sources and applying concepts, is the explicit rationale behind the shift away from single terminal exams towards continuous, competency-based assessment, which eases the anxiety tied to one high-stakes recall test. So this statement also holds.

Since both statements independently restate accepted principles of the same examination-reform philosophy, the correct choice is that both statements are true.

Cross-check: Neither statement makes an absolute claim that reform philosophy would reject: the first is a general critique of the system-orientation of exams, not a claim that all exams are useless, and the second is a conditional claim about reduced stress, consistent with the documented rationale for CCE. Testing the opposite of each, that exams are learner-centred, or that shifting to competency-testing would not reduce stress, contradicts the assessment-reform position tested here, which confirms both statements as true.

Note also that "Only statement A is true" and "Statement A is true but statement B is false" describe the identical combination (A true, B false); both are eliminated once Statement B is confirmed true, and "Statement B is true but statement A is false" is eliminated once Statement A is confirmed true, leaving "both statements are true" as the only combination consistent with the analysis above.