“There is a plan to make CAT an independent agency. The CAT will have resources
to conduct the test. The plan is yet to take final shape”.
India is planning to set up a National Testing Authority
to conduct admission tests to engineering colleges on the lines of America's Educational
Testing Services that holds the SAT every year. Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal today
said; the NTA would be set up through an Act of Parliament. The government has been
preparing to introduce a single national entrance test for engineering that will
replace the present multiple tests. The HRD ministry, which wants to
start the exam in 2014, is in the process of talking to state governments. “At present,
the task before the ministry is to convince all the states to agree to the single
national entrance. Then the bill will come in Parliament for creation of NTA. It
will take some time", a ministry official said.
Before that, in 2013, it plans to hold one entrance test for about 60 central engineering
institutions, including the IITs, NITs, IIITs and the IIEST, by merging the IIT-JEE
and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination. The Central Board of Secondary
Education (CBSE) will hold this exam. The government has created a Centre for Assessment
and Evaluation Study (CAES) within the CBSE to give research support for smooth
conduct of the test. “Our aim is to convert CAES into NTA by an Act. This will be
a statutory body meant for conduct of engineering entrance test every year,” Sibal
said. At present, there are multiple engineering entrance tests: the IITs conduct
the IIT-JEE, the NITs and IIITs take students who clear the AIEEE, the state governments
hold state-level JEEs and some deemed universities conduct their own tests. Since
this is inconvenient for students, the government is pushing for a single entrance
test. “At present, the CAES will provide research support to the CBSE on a number
of issues like how to make the test bias-free. It means the CAES will suggest what
kind of questions are to be set to ensure that rural students and children from
socially backward classes are not disadvantaged”, CBSE Chairman, Vineet Joshi said.
Once the NTA is established, it would conduct the national entrance at least twice
a year, helping students to improve their performance and get into the college of
their choice. Earlier, a committee on IIT-JEE reforms headed by IIT Kharagpur, Director
Damodar Acharya had suggested creation of an NTA as a statutory body to conduct
entrance examinations. The committee said “the NAT should hold the national engineering
entrance online and thrice a year”. The IIMs are also planning to convert the Common
Admission Test (CAT) into an independent agency that will conduct exams for admission
into the IIMs and other B-schools across the globe. The IIMs want to make CAT an
alternative to the US-based Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) whose scores
are accepted by leading B-Schools internationally. “There is a plan to make CAT
an independent agency. The CAT will have resources to conduct the test. The plan
is yet to take final shape,” IIM Calcutta Director Shekhar Chaudhury said.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
