By: R Chandrakala on December 26, 2017
The IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology) have declined the proposal of the Government to permit the National Testing Agency to conduct JEE Advanced Examination. The NTA, which is approved by the Union cabinet on November 10, is looked upon as the largest exam conducting body in the country. In a meeting of IIT Directors that was conducted on December 15 in Chennai, the institutes decided that they were not in favor of NTA getting involved in conducting JEE Advanced, the way to secure entry in 23 premier engineering institutes.
According to them, handing over the entrance test would not make much of a difference, definitely not in terms of reducing the burden of IITs. The agency would have to keep coming back to the faculty to set question papers. In a case, even if the NTA were to take over the conduct of JEE Advanced, IITs would send most of its teachers to invigilate the choice of the exam centers.
IITs have always seemed to be very protective of the exams that they conduct in general. During the tenure of Kapil Sibal as the Human Resource Development Minister, AIEEE was not being merged to make a single common entrance examination to enable admissions.
It is also being said that the latest decision could have a bearing on whether Indian Institutes of Management would be deciding to part with CAT or not. In the initial year, NTA would be taking over all entrance examinations that are usually organized by Central Board of Secondary Education, such as National Eligibility Test, Central Teacher Eligibility Test and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.
Although several governments in the past have not been in favor of establishing an NTA, the proposal has materialized after CBSE has requested the Government to relieve it of the additional burden of conducting entrance examinations.
One of the objectives of setting up the National testing agency was holding JEE Main and NEET twice a year. The sole purpose of setting up a National Testing Agency was to relieve Central Board of Secondary Education from its routine duties of conducting the entrance examination and improving the quality of higher education in our country.
With NTA, it has been likely that entrance examinations like JEE Main, NEET, NET and CTET would be conducted twice a year from 2019. Apart from Grade 10 and 12 Board Exams, CBSE conducts five other exams such as JEE, NEET, UGC National Eligibility Test, Central Teacher Eligibility Test and entrance examinations for Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas.
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