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| Monday, Aug 14, 2006
CET remains favourite option among many
THE UNCERTAINTY over the fate of the Common Entrance Test to professional undergraduate courses seems to have earned the test per se more supporters than detractors, if one went by the mood at the first public hearing of the M.Anandakrishnan committee in Chennai recently. The committee has been constituted by the State government to go into the technicalities of doing away with the CET.
As parent after parent voiced strong opinions in favour of continuing with the CET, they were supported by academicians and analysts who said an abolition would not, in effect, help rural or poor students better their chances of admission.
One parent of an MBBS student went to the extent of saying "If you consider only the subjective plus two examination's scores for professional course admissions, we will have people to grant 200/200 marks or others who will get you an assured 200/200... "
Difficulties
A point which some speakers who wanted the CET abolished, harped on the difficulties and expense faced by students, especially the rural lot.
But parents such as Beena Ramanathan noted that "Rather than abolishing the CET, the Government should set a question paper that tests student capabilities vis-à-vis engineering/medical syllabus." One cannot any longer talk about the urban rural divide for education, as if "we have forgotten a medium called television. Good quality teaching can be made through TV," she noted.
"Abolishing the CET could lead to examination malpractices as valuation is never uniform and revaluation has thrown up differing results. Last academic year, we saw more than 3,000 students get differential revised marks and that too, with an increase of almost 32 marks in some cases. Hence, the present system is the best alternative and an option would be to have reservation of 10 to 15 per cent of seats for rural students,'' said Salem-based analyst Jayaprakash Gandhi.
Citing an analysis of medical cut-off marks this year in 15 educational districts — mostly rural ones — he said many did not have even one student scoring 194 marks out of 200. (See box _ *scores computed by taking Plus Two marks obtained in physics, chemistry and biology). Around 35 educational districts had less than four students each making the grade and 20 had barely three students.
Namakkal scored high with 157 students making the mark while Chennai city, which has four educational districts, had a total of 142 students.
As such, on admissions, urban districts had done well which proved that, CET or not, urban students would still beat their rural counterparts.
Analytical capability
"If the TNPCEE were to be scrapped, then students would resort to learning by rote rather than profess analytical capability. A high percentage of students from the State, with a high academic scale in Plus Two, get admission to prestigious institutions such as BITS, Pilani, based on the Board exam marks but fail to cope with the syllabus and fall to stress and frustration, eventually withdrawing from the institutions,'' N. Vijayan, president, Principals of Matriculation Higher Secondary Schools Association, said.
"With the new syllabus, even students from remote areas such as Sattur and Thiruvaroor have entered the MBBS stream or leading engineering colleges. If the TNPCEE were to be scrapped, then the gap that exists between the availability of human resources and employability will widen further,'' he said, adding that the entrance examination would enrich the competitive skills of all students.
The Prof. M. Anandakrishnan committee would ensure that the abolition of CET would be done on constitutionally valid grounds, State Higher Education Secretary, K. Ganesan, said. One of the factors that needed to be looked into was the low numbers of CBSE students who went through the single window counselling process — only 1517 students out of a total of 66,000 students for this year. "Should a CET be held for the benefit of such small numbers?" he asked.
No country in the world had so far evolved a sound method of assessing the merit of a student, the panel's chairman, M. Anandakrishnan, said. A change in the mode of examination, by itself, was nothing new as all competitive examinations were subjected to periodic overhauling.
Also, the committee was examining data from the last three years to study the pattern in entrance examination/Plus-Two marks as also the issue of urban students vs. rural students. The committee's report, which would be "a rational, logical decision that will not affect students'' will be submitted to the government in the middle of September, he added.
You can send your opinion by e-mail to lo@tndte.gov.in or by
surface mail to the Director of Technical Education, Guindy
Campus, Chennai 600 025, till August 20.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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