Chennai: Despite state government’s efforts to improve the school education system in Tamil Nadu, only 31 (0.15 per cent) of the 1,490 Tamil Nadu state board students who took the JEE (advanced) test last year were able to crack it to gain entry into premier institutions.
An analysis of JEE (advanced) results by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi has also revealed that 1,528 CBSE students from Tamil Nadu wrote the entrance test and 419 cleared it.
As in the past, students from Andhra Pradesh ruled the roost with 3,698 getting admitted to various IITs, followed by Rajasthan (3,631), Uttar Pradesh (2,520), Delhi (1,509), Madhya Pradesh (1,489), Bihar (1,158), Haryana (776), West Bengal (637) and Tamil Nadu (450).
To help more students enter prestigious institutions, the human resources development ministry revised the JEE pattern last year as JEE (main) and JEE (advanced), in which a student’s 60 per cent marks from school boards and 40 per cent from JEE (main) score were taken into consideration; besides, only the top 20 percentile of the school board could take up JEE (advanced) to get a seat in IITs.
Former deputy director and professor emeritus at IIT-M’s ocean engineering department Prof V.G. Idichandy says that it would be premature to judge the reform brought in last year.
“Year after year, Tamil Nadu’s case remains the same. You don’t have good coaching centres in the state to help State board students enter IITs,” said Prof. Idichandy who was part of the IIT-JEE reform committee set up by IIT directors in 2007.
Lamenting that IITs could not do away with the coaching system for students for entry into premier institutes, the former deputy director said that in the past there were students from a few CBSE schools in Chennai who got admitted to IITs as the schools coached them for JEE too; this is now missing.
“Tamil Nadu students also have several good options in the state, so they are looking at some top engineering colleges like Anna University’s College of Engineering, Guindy,” he added.
Eminent academician and career counsellor Jayaprakash A. Gandhi reiterated that the Tamil Nadu school education syllabus encourages rote learning rather than improving students’ ability to think.
“When you want your students to memorise answers and write these in the exams, how can you make them get into the country’s top institutes?” questioned Jayaprakash A. Gandhi.
Adding that Tamil Nadu state board students do not concentrate more on the class XI syllabus and skip this to study the XII standard curriculum directly in class XI, Jayaprakash A. Gandhi says that most questions asked in JEE (main and advanced) come from the class XI syllabus.
However school education expert Dr S.S. Rajagopalan has a different take in the issue.
“Tamil Nadu students are not interested in joining IITs and most of these aspirants come from urban cities like Chennai from the middle and upper middle classes. The rich and the poor are not bothered about IITs so they look at other engineering colleges as their option,” he said.
He adds that a student from Andhra Pradesh needs to crack the Engineering, Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test (Eamcet) to join an engineering college so s/he has to undergo the coaching process. Hence they also do well in other entrance exams like JEE.
Fewer TN kids crack VIT exam
Chennai: It is not only that the Tamil Nadu state board students find it difficult to enter the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and National Institute of TecÂhÂnology (NIT), but also some top deemed universities in the state like SRM, VIT and Sastra.
VIT founder-chancellor Dr G. Viswanathan lamented that of the top 10,000 students who cracked VIT’s engineering entrance examination, only 70 were from Tamil Nadu whereas Rajasthan sent 700.
“Among the 40 school education boards in the country, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) rules the roost. Other state school education boards, including Tamil Nadu should improve to match CBSE,” he said, adding that the Tamil Nadu school education system had a lot of problems, including the standard of curriculum.
“Tamil Nadu students are not prepared to take up competitive exams and the state also has no coaching centres to coach students for the entrance exams. If one looks at Andhra Pradesh, students spend half the day learning in school and the rest of the day getting coached in coaching centres,” the top academician said.
Sastra University’s dean (planning and development) Prof S.Vaidhyasubramaniam said that admissions through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-main) attract more students from CBSE as the board tests fundamental concepts which the Tamil Nadu board misses.
“The Tamil Nadu syllabus sticks to textbook learning and nothing beyond that. Most students who we admit through the JEE are from the CBSE board, which will give you a picture of how Tamil Nadu board students are placed,” he noted.
