Soon, take engg entrance tests several times a year
NEW DELHI: Students aspiring to study at the country’s top engineering
colleges are likely to get multiple opportunities in a single year to
crack the tough entrance exam.
The move will significantly shrink an aspirant’s waiting time for the
next test in case of failure to clear the first attempt at the Joint
Entrance Examination (JEE) Main — conducted for admission to NITs, IITs
and other centrally funded institutions.
For instance, if back-toback exams are conducted in December,
February and April, a candidate will be allowed to write all of them, or
she can opt for one or two. The best marks from any of the three tests
will account for the student’s all-India ranking, which decides her
eligibility for admission.
The National Testing Service (NTS), a new overarching agency that
the government announced in its annual budget this February to conduct
all entrance exams for higher education institutions, might hold the JEE
Main fully online from the next academic session.
The format
will allow the NTS to hold the engineering test at least thrice a year,
sources said. That way a student would not have to spend a full year
studying for the test again.
At present, a student has the option of writing the JEE Main online or
offline, but the exam is conducted just once a year. But only 125,000 of
the almost 1 million students opt to take the test online.
“To ensure greater transparency and avoid instances of paper leak, the
ministry is planning to conduct examinations through NTS on an online
mode,” said a senior official in the human resource development
ministry.
Sources said the NTS is likely to conduct all entrance examinations — including JEE, CAT, and UGC-NET — online from 2018.
Education experts welcomed the move, underscoring that several global
screening tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and TOEFL are
conducted up to seven times a year.
“This will ensure that a candidate is able to give his/her best if
there are specific testing windows,” said Soumitra Roy of Prometric
India, a global agency that had conducted tests such as CAT for premier
business schools.
“This must be done provided there is adequate physical and
technical infrastructure in a country like India with different
demographics.”
To ensure students from rural areas don’t face obstacles in taking
the online exam, NTS will help prepare them with through
round-the-clock call centre support.
“NTS will establish an online testing mechanism which will be able
to conduct online tests for at least 1 million students at a time with
suitable systems for proctoring, instant display of marks and
preparation of the merit list,” an official said.
The online system will ensure better safety mechanisms, according
to Bipin Batra, executive director of the National Board of Examinations
(NBE), which conducts entrance tests such as NEET PG and NEET Super
Specialty for medical students.
Source: Hindustan Times, 17th February, 2017
Link: http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
