This article is being penned as much in anguish as in hope. The anguish is nationwide and stems from the enormous distress and demoralisation that has affected a large segment of our youth whose hopes and expectations of success were dashed just a couple of days back when a “guess paper” linked to the NEET examination was leaked, and the exam subsequently cancelled.
The torment that prospective examinees face is easy to understand but very hard to alleviate. After all, when someone decides to enrol for an exam, she invests an important part of the formative years of her life to the tortuous process of preparing for it. In addition, she incurs significant expenses for coaching as she knows that that is a key element to success. And what are the odds of her succeeding?
Given that there were 22,750,11 candidates who were scheduled to take the NEET examination this year and only 1,29,000 MBBS seats, it follows that her chances of success were a mere 6 per cent. In other words, for every one hundred candidates, less than six would be selected. Imagine what goes on in the mind of a youngster who gambles so much of her intellectual and economic capital for so little?
By all accounts, a large number of the candidates were from the not so well-off segments of society. The anguish is exacerbated when you know that this is not the first time such a leak has happened — nor are they confined to the NEET examination alone. A cursory examination of the data related to the history of question paper leaks in India will disabuse the reader of any such notion.
This brings us to a larger issue, which is that we are examining our students right out of their minds. A child is subjected to exams since she starts school — tests for kindergarten are not unheard of in the big metros. But the genuine torment must be reserved for the time the child begins to approach high school and coaching classes become the norm.
Coaching centres thrive on the fears of middle-class parents driven by the belief that the path to success lies through the portals of institutions like IIT or an AIIMS. Coaching centres are perceived as necessary gateways for enabling schoolchildren to succeed at the various entrance examinations that are being conducted by our worthy institutions of knowledge. The list of such examinations is countless; there’s NEET, of course, but also CUET and JEE, plus GATE and CAT. The day is not far off when viewed from outer space India shall appear as one big exam centre.
This business of inflicting one exam after another on young and impressionable minds flies in the face of the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP). The policy advocates a much more enlightened approach that advocates testing as means of enabling a student to gain knowledge and not for disabling the mind of
the student.
To imbue a bit of fresh air into the discussion at hand, I would like to draw attention to an interesting experiment underway for about three years in Jammu and Kashmir.
In keeping with the spirit of the NEP 2020, several prominent universities in J&K have launched an innovative undergraduate degree programme formally known as the Design Your Degree Programme. The main features of this include, exposure to communication and analytical skills, alongside training in the use of data and IT. Learning happens largely through group-based project work. The blackboard plays a substantially diminished role.
Extra-curricular and co-curricular activities carry academic credit, as does entrepreneurial activity. Students take part in activities such as riding on a train that gets converted to a College On Wheels, where they work on projects related to any aspect of the journey onboard and where the train halts.
As students progress year by year, they begin to realise their yearnings and interests and specialise accordingly. They have the option of exiting after one year with a certificate that records the credit earned, after two years with a diploma, after three years with an undergraduate degree with specialisation of their choice, or after four years with an Honours degree which has a research component. Testing happens in enlightened ways where project outcomes are presented and discussed in depth before credit is accorded.
But to return to the NEET crisis, let me say here that all is not lost; simple, but powerful ways of re-imagining the NEET exam exist, especially if meticulous planning is paired with shrewd technology. What is puzzling isn’t primarily the issue of leaks, but rather our apparent powerlessness in halting the decay. Here is a foolproof way to fix the testing crisis.
First, the National Testing Agency (NTA) should invest massively in building a meticulously curated question repository. Foolproof Internet connectivity at every test venue needs dependable power backups and high-speed, sturdy laser printers too.
The NTA must develop a sophisticated algorithm capable of instantly generating a flawless question set via unpredictable randomisation. This set would be transmitted securely, in encrypted digital format, to all centres mere hours ahead of exam start time.
Centres would then print copies just two hours prior. Every exam room must have clear-recording video surveillance of all proceedings. Papers can thus circulate securely without risk.
Ideally, equipping candidates with solid desktops or laptops would allow emailing the paper directly at exam time, with typed responses submitted via secure software to a central grading hub. Alternatively, handwritten answers on paper remain viable. This serves as an initial blueprint to spark a brainstorming drive toward a tamper-proof system that restores candidate confidence.
What I have proposed here is not NEET-specific. It is a simple model for conducting any exam without the fear of leakages. Testing is only supposed to be a medium for learning, it cannot be a substitute for it. Educating a child has to be India’s goal, not testing whether she is capable of being educated.
