The revised Appendix IX format, field by field

CBSE revised the Mandatory Public Disclosure format in January 2026, and a great many schools are still publishing the old one. The change is in Circular No. 1/2026, dated 12 January 2026, whose pages 4 to 6 carry the “APPENDIX – IX / REVISED FORMAT” in full.

The circular required compliance “with respect to information regarding qualification of teachers in its school’s website as part of Mandatory Public Disclosure as per revised format of the Appendix IX latest for 15th February, 2026”. That date has passed and no extension was published. So the honest position today is not that a deadline is approaching — it is that a school still on the old format is already out of step.

It is easy to see how it was missed. CBSE’s own circular archive on cbse.gov.in stops in 2020. The live index is the SARAS circulars page, linked from the main site as “Affiliation Unit Circulars” and not obvious unless you know to look.

What actually changed

Three things, and the first is the one that matters:

1. Section D gained a second column. The old form had one DETAILS column. The revised form has NUMBER/STRENGTH and NAME AND QUALIFICATIONS, and the PGT, TGT and PRT rows each read “NAME-DESIGNATION-QUALIFICATION (PROVIDE LINK)”.
2. Section E went from 7 rows to 9, adding the library at row 4 and CWSN toilets at row 8.
3. Section B item 8 now reads “VALID DRINKING WATER, HEALTH AND SANITATION CERTIFICATES AND WATER TESTING REPORT”.

The correction most schools need: a list, not certificates

The most-read blog on this topic tells schools to publish “self-attested scans of relevant documents” for teachers. That is not what the revised form asks for, and acting on it means publishing your staff’s degree and B.Ed. certificates to the open web for no reason.

What Section D actually requires is a list — name, designation and qualification — reachable from a link. The circular’s own opening paragraph does use the phrase “self attested copies of the documents / information” in the same sentence as teacher qualifications, so the confusion is understandable rather than invented. But the form itself says “PROVIDE LINK”, not “upload certificates”.

Two other things in that blog are simply wrong and worth naming, because schools are copying them: it presents a five-part structure (School Details / Infrastructure & Facilities / Teacher Information / Academic Performance / Other Statutory Details) that matches no CBSE form, and it says the disclosure is “self-attested by the Principal”, which understates the Section B note.

It does get one important thing right, and we will say so: a revised format does exist, and the deadline was 15 February 2026.

The revised Appendix IX, section by section

Section A — General Information

Seven rows, columns SL NO. / INFORMATION / DETAILS. Unchanged from 2021.

Section B — Documents and Information

Eight rows, columns SL NO. / DOCUMENTS-INFORMATION / UPLOAD DOCUMENTS. Affiliation and upgradation letters; society, trust or company registration; the state NOC; the RTE recognition certificate; building safety; fire safety; the DEO certificate; and item 8, drinking water, health and sanitation certificates with the water testing report.

The note beneath Section B is carried forward unchanged, CBSE’s typo included:

“THE SCHOOLS NEEDS TO UPLOAD THE SELF ATTESTED COPIES OF ABOVE LISTED DOCUMETNS BY CHAIRMAN/MANAGER/SECRETARY AND PRINCIPAL. IN CASE, IT IS NOTICED AT LATER STAGE THAT UPLOADED DOCUMENTS ARE NOT GENUINE THEN SCHOOL SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ACTION AS PER NORMS.”

That sentence is ungrammatical and CBSE has never clarified it. It can be read as requiring both the Chairman, Manager or Secretary and the Principal to attest. We cannot tell you it definitely does — but joint signature is the safer reading, and it costs nothing.

Section C — Result and Academics

Five rows: fee structure, annual academic calendar, the SMC list, the PTA list, and the last three years’ board results. Then two separate tables, RESULT CLASS: X and RESULT CLASS: XII, with columns S.NO. / YEAR / NO. OF REGISTERED STUDENTS / NO. OF STUDETNS PASSED / PASS PERCENTAGE / REMARKS.

Worth knowing: item 5 says “last three-year result”, but the printed tables carry only two blank rows. Add a third.

Section D — Staff (Teaching) — this is the revised one

Columns: S.No. / INFORMATION / NUMBER-STRENGTH / NAME AND QUALIFICATIONS.

Note the numbering: PGT, TGT and PRT sit beneath item 4 without serial numbers of their own. TEACHERS SECTION RATIO is item 5, not item 8.

Section E — School Infrastructure — now nine rows

1. Total campus area (sq. mtr.)
2. Number and size of classrooms (sq. mtr.)
3. Number and size of laboratories including computer labs (sq. mtr.)
4. Number and size of library (sq. mtr.) — added in the revision
5. Internet facility (Y/N)
6. Number of girls’ toilets
7. Number of boys’ toilets
8. Number of CWSN toilets — added in the revision
9. Link of YouTube video of the school inspection covering the infrastructure

How to tell which version you are looking at

CBSE’s own typographical errors are the most reliable fingerprint, and they are carried between versions unchanged: DOCUMETNS, STUDETNS, CALANDER, APPLICABLILITY, and in the revised form CLASSSROOM and “OPF THE SCHOOL”.

If your school’s page carries those typos, someone copied a real CBSE proforma, which is the right instinct. Check which one: the giveaway is Section D. One DETAILS column means you are on the 2021 form. Two columns means you are current.

If you would rather not do this by hand, our free generator now emits the revised format — fill it once and it produces a print-ready PDF plus a copy-paste block for your site. No login, and nothing you type leaves your browser.

Where it has to appear on your website

Circular No. 09/2021, dated 21 May 2021, is explicit: the disclosure goes “on the Home page itself of the school website under an icon ‘Mandatory Pubic disclosure’” — CBSE’s missing L, not ours — and, underlined in the original:

“The icon link so posted on the schools’ website should be distinctly visible for easy accessibility.”

The legal basis is not the circular alone. Circular 03/2021, dated 5 March 2021, amended clause 2.4.9 to require that the disclosure “shall be uploaded at prominent place on the website”, and clause 2.3.8 to add the Appendix IX format. CBSE’s published Chapter 2 PDF has not been reissued to incorporate either amendment, so reading the chapter alone will mislead you.

And the reason this matters beyond tidiness, verbatim from 09/2021: “The Central Board of Secondary Education has also made it as a mandatory pre condition for granting or extending affiliation.” If you are filing on SARAS — the window closes 30 September 2026 — this needs to be live first.

The four ways schools fail this, in CBSE’s own words

Circular No. 01/2025, dated 8 January 2025, lists exactly what the Board finds when it checks. It is the best self-audit in the primary material:

• No functional website at all
• A website exists, but nothing is uploaded, or only part of it is
• Documents are uploaded but “the links to these documents are inactive”
• Everything is correct, but “the icon/link of the same is not prominently displayed on its Main Home page”

The third one catches more schools than any other. Check every link on your disclosure page from a browser that is not logged into anything.

TEACHERS SECTION RATIO — what it actually means

This field is filled in wrongly more than any other, because it looks like the pupil-teacher ratio. It is not. Circular 1/2026 quotes clause 5.4:

“The pupil teachers’ ratio should not exceed 30:1 in the school. In addition to this there must be 1.5 teachers per section, excluding principal, physical education teacher and counsellor, to teach various subjects.”

So the field wants teachers per section. A school publishing 1:1.5 or 1:1.7 is filling it in correctly. The 30:1 pupil-teacher ratio is a separate requirement, and the exclusions — principal, physical education teacher, counsellor — change the arithmetic, so do them before you publish a number.

What happens if you do not comply

Circular 1/2026 names the head itself: non-compliance “shall be viewed seriously as violation of clause 12.2.3, which may lead to imposition of penalty as laid down in Chapter 12 of the Affiliation Bye laws of the Board.”

One thing to be careful about here. A great many pages, and CBSE’s own published Chapter 12 PDF, still print a financial penalty of up to ₹5,00,000. That cap was repealed on 18 February 2025. Clause 12.1.2 now reads that the quantum of financial penalty “shall be decided on the basis of gravity of violations”. There is no published ceiling. We mention it because the stale figure is still circulating on a document served from cbse.gov.in.

Clause 12.2 empowers the penalties listed in 12.1.1 to 12.1.9. We have not seen any published instance of a penalty actually being levied for an Appendix IX failure specifically, and we are not going to imply one.

The other deadline: 15 September

Distinct from this disclosure, and roughly two weeks away. Clause 14.5 of the Affiliation Bye-Laws — quoted in full inside Circular 1/2026 and readable in Chapter 14 — requires the school’s annual report on its website before 15 September of every year.

The content overlaps with the disclosure but is not identical, and unlike Appendix IX this one genuinely does recur annually. CBSE’s 2026 circular groups clauses 2.3.8, 2.4.9, 14.5 and 5.4 together, so treating them as one job at one sitting is reasonable.

If you are comparing against an older page

The format in force from March 2021 to January 2026 had: Section A, 7 rows; Section B, 8 documents; Section C, 5 rows plus two result tables; Section D, 5 rows with a DETAILS column only; and Section E, 7 rows. If that is what your website shows, it is the superseded version.

What we could not establish

• The consolidated Affiliation Bye-Laws PDF is a 19 MB scan with no text layer. Every clause quoted here is quoted as a circular reports it, not read from the Bye-Laws.
• Whether the Section B note requires two signatures or one. The sentence is ambiguous and CBSE has published no clarification.
• We found no CBSE statement that there would be “no further extensions” of the 15 February 2026 date. That phrase is press language, not the Board’s.
• No published rescission of the 2021 format exists. The revised format supersedes it in practice; CBSE has not said so in those words.