Hyderabad: The NDA government seems to be leaning towards a United States style of assessment as indicated in the Prof. Ashok Misra Committee recommendations on revamping the JEE system.
The Committee has recommended a National Testing Service (NTS) administered aptitude test, to be held more than once a year. The system closely resembles the SAT administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the US.
But, while the government has made the recommendations of the committee public, several questions still remain in the minds of students. Though the committee has not stated so, it is apparent that the scores in the NTS exam will have to be scaled, as is done for SAT. Currently, across all exams in the country, raw scores are used to determine ranking.
In the US, the College Board releases a conversion chart to convert raw SAT scores to scaled scores, which are finally used for the purpose of admissions to undergrad colleges. Experts also said scaling of scores would be required for the NTS exam. Mentor director of a coaching institute said more information was needed from the government regarding the scaling of scoring in the exam.
At the same time, a big hurdle for the NTS exam could be its own computer-based nature. The Prof. Misra Committee has recommended that the test be completely online. However, acceptance of online tests is still not very high in the country, given the number of students from rural areas.
In JEE Main 2015, only about 1.86 lakh out of the total of 12.86 lakh had registered for the online version of the exam. “It is not as much about rural students as it is about broad acceptance of the computer-based test.
Computer-based test will have to be adopted at some time, but whether it can be done straightaway is a question. Rural students appearing for JEE are not very much behind their urban counterparts,” an IIT Hyderabad professor said.
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