| Monday, Apr 30, 2007
Admissions will still be tricky
With the curtains down on CET, the focus now turns to rankings
for admission to professional courses. A Government policy that
clearly lays down the guidelines for standardising marks through
normalisation will help.
With the Madras High Court spelling the final word on the abolition
of the Common Entrance Test for professional undergraduate admissions,
the uncertainty surrounding admissions may still not be over.
With the focus now shifting to how rankings would be done, academicians
and students say only a clearly spelt-out policy by the Government
would set doubts at rest.
"Tamil Nadu has now become the standard bearer for the
other States to do away with their own common entrance examinations
too. Not only was the entrance examination an inaccurate way
of measuring students' competencies, it was also the reason
for a huge money spinning industry centred around coaching classes,"
says former Anna University vice-chancellor M. Anandakrishnan,
who chaired the government-convened panel to recommend measures
to abolish the CET.
He, however, points to a practical difficulty that may arise
in the ranking process: a tie due to bunching when several students
end up with the same scores based on Board examination marks.
"The Government should announce an explicit and transparent
policy with clearly spelt parameters on the sequencing of marks
even before normalisation begins. This was one of the committee's
recommendations to the Government," he adds.
Also, the post-CET abolition admission process would provide
Tamil medium students a level playing field.
"While 75,000 English medium students took the CET every
year, only 35,000 Tamil medium students did so. Now, if admissions
will be based solely on board examination marks, they can have
a fair shot at opportunities."
Students who spoke to Education Plus also said the Government
should bring out clear guidelines on standardisation/ normalisation
and sequencing of marks. "As the board examinations this
year had lower difficulty levels, hundreds of students will
hit the same cut-off score," Akash Vaidyanathan, a Chennai
student, said.
"In previous years, anywhere between one hundred to four
hundred students would get the same cut-off marks. For example,
in 2005, there were 442 students with a cut-off mark of 198
out of 200, and in 2006, there were 60 students in a similar
situation. How the ranking is done will, to a large extent,
determine which college and courses students opt for,"
says Jayaprakash Gandhi, Salem-based educational analyst.
Another issue that remains to be seen is how exactly rural students
would benefit.
According to Mr. Gandhi, not a single student in 15 rural educational
districts had scored the cut-off marks of 194 out of 200 for
medical admissions last year.
In 32 rural districts, only 35 students had made the grade while
the remaining 843 were all from urban districts. Among total
marks scored by Science group students, a total of 6,377 students
scored 1,100 marks out of 1,200. Among these, 5683 students
were from urban centres.
The picture, it appears, is still far from clear.
Courtesy: The Hindu - Education Plus
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