NetIndian News Network
New Delhi, May 28, 2012
There will be a common admission examination
process in the country from 2013 for undergraduate programmes in engineering in institutions such as the Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian
Institutes of Information Technology
(IIITs) and other Central educational institutions.
This will
be through a Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) that wil be conducted in
two parts, JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED, with weightage given to performance in the Class XII Board examinations.
This
was decided at a meeting of the Joint Councils of IITs, NITs, IIITs and
other Central educational institutions here today, which was presided
over by Union Minister for Human
Resource Development Kapil Sibal, after a process of
deliberations and consultations spanning over two years.
According
to an official press release,
the Class XII Board/equivalent marks normalized on percentile basis
through an appropriate formula plus the marks obtained in the JEE-MAIN
examination, with equal weightage, would be used by IITs for purposes of
gating/screening.
Only a fixed number of
candidates (five times the number of the seats for admission in the IIT
system or a pre-fixed cut-off) screened on the basis of merit assessed
on the basis of cumulative score of normalized School Board marks and
performance in JEE-MAIN examination would be eligible to be considered
for admission.
The ranking for admission to
undergraduate programmes in IITs would be based entirely on the
performance in the JEE-ADVANCED examination from amongst the candidates
screened through this process.
For all other
Centrally funded Institutions, there would be 40% weightage for
performance in Class XII Board marks normalized on percentile basis
through an appropriate formula, 30% weightage for performance in
JEE-MAIN and 30% weightage in JEE-ADVANCED and a combined merit decided
accordingly.
JEE-MAIN tests shall be multiple
choice objective type paper whereas the nature and modalities of the
JEE-ADVANCED shall be determined by the Joint Admission Board of IITs.
The
proposed changes will be effective from the year 2013 and both CFTIs
and CBSE would work jointly.
The Joint Admission
Board (JAB) of the IIT system would have complete control on matters such as paper setting,
evaluation and preparation of the merit list, etc. over the JEE-ADVANCED
and CBSE would provide the administrative support for conduct of the
examination.
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For
the conduct of the JEE-MAIN examination an expanded Joint Admission
Board shall be constituted including the NIT system, other CFTIs and
State Government representatives in an appropriate manner. CBSE will
provide the administrative and logistic support for the conduct of
JEE-MAIN examination across the country.
The
process of establishing co-ordination between COBSE & JAB-IITs for
implementation of the core curriculum in sciences and mathematics across
the CBSE, ICSE and State Boards shall be put in place immediately.
Those
students who have appeared in the Class XII Board examinations in 2012
and wish to improve upon their performance can appear again for the
Board examinations in 2013. CBSE and State Boards would make appropriate
arrangements to facilitate this through a special dispensation.
The
transparency processes established by the IIT system presently and in
AIEEE-2012 shall be adopted for the JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED, too, the
release said.
The decision seeks to address the
concern in society caused by the multiplicity of entrance examinations
that a student intending to pursue a course in engineering has to appear
for.
The burden imposed on the students in terms
of time, payment of examination fees and the stress caused in scheduling
and preparing for each examination is tremendous. The students have to
perforce restrict their choice of institutions for which they can
compete.
The Government has been working on
reforms in the examination system by moving towards a common national
test to reduce the burden on the students and at the same time
preserving the autonomy of the State Governments and institutions in
devising its admission process.
According to the
release, another serious problem with the present system is the neglect
of the Class XII examination process while admitting students to
engineering institutions. This has led to the almost complete disregard
to the secondary school system and neglect of education imparted in
schools, impacting quality and access.
Parents
and children have been forced to seek access to outside-the-school
instruction methods to enable the student to prepare for the multitude
of entrance examinations. The proposed reform attempts to bring focus
back to the schooling system by
giving weightage to performance in Class XII Board examinations
normalized on percentile basis. The reform would, in the longer term,
have an impact on the quality of secondary education and enable better
quality access, the release said.
It said the
Joint Councils of IITs, NITs & IIITs considered various views that
had emerged during the process of consultations. A strong body of
opinion amongst the members of the Council was that the importance of
the schooling system has to be revived in the larger public interest by
giving due weightage to the performance of students in the Class XII
Board examinations and at the same time maintaining the credibility and
integrity of admissions to higher educational institutions.
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A
meeting of State Education Ministers’ is proposed for June 5 where the
participation of States in the common national test process would be
deliberated upon. States would have the freedom to join in the process
and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to
normalized Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-MAIN and
JEE-ADVANCED, the release added.
NNN
