July 2024
“The year 2024 dealt a rude jolt to the school education scenario and the systems to evaluate the merit of the school-leaving (12th standard) students in India. Allegations of malpractice had been in existence for a long time -- well, not prescient, but sadly accepted now.
At last, after a series of interactions and arguments on the NEET (UG) 2024 saga, the Supreme Court of India concluded that : there is no need for a retest as there was no systemic breach in the sanctity of the test, and the counselling may go on with the re-revised list after re-evaluation of the answer to a question in the physics paper which brings down the number of toppers from 61 to 17 (67 to 17 as per the first iteration before the 'grace marks' were rolled back).
The Supreme Court has acknowledged that question papers were leaked at Hazaribagh and Patna. Unprecedented charges were made of paper leaks, giving out the wrong question papers, damaged answer keys, impersonation by students, and an unusually high number of toppers from certain centres -- a string of bad news. Police investigations led to arrests in some States, and the CBI is looking into the possibility of a national network's involvement in the case. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Karnataka passed resolutions seeking to scrap NEET and revert to old systems. Meanwhile, the recommendation of the Justice D. Murugesan Committee which include : scrapping of entrance exam of any kind and "banning" coaching centres was submitted to the government in Tamil Nadu on July 1, 2024.
What is bad about the old pre-2016 system of entrance examinations, and what is good about NEET ? The old system is beset with problems such as students having to appear in multiple exams for different States, varying test standards, and a lack of transparency -- that's the bad of it. The goodness of NEET is that it can create an equitable and accessible system that would provide a standardised test to select the brightest from across the country. The question now is about the credibility of its integrity, sanctity and transparency about which the police, CBI, Supreme Court and the committee headed by K. Radhakrishnan are looking into. The irregularities that had surfaced gave currency to the demand of going back to the old system.
While the Supreme Court had denied to RETEST, there is a need to clean the Augean stables. The solution to the problem may lie in fixing the present system by the committee set up under K. Radhakrishnan to reform the NTA's systems and procedures and keeping an eye on global best practices. Or it may just be a cosmetic exercise. Whatever it may be, the fabric of the society is generally coloured with corruption and people find loopholes in any system. And, which committee are we going to set up to reform medical education system in India ? Go to https://drtramaprasad.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-noble-profession.html ”
-- Dr. T. Rama Prasad
This is an excerpt from
https://drtramaprasad.blogspot.com/2017/04/school-education_30.html
