Establishment of NTA
In 2017, the Government of India established the National Testing Agency (NTA) to conduct entrance examinations for professional courses.
National Testing Agency (NTA) was established as a Society registered under the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860.
It is an autonomous and self-sustained testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for admission/fellowship in higher educational institutions.
The NTA conducts more than 15 entrance examinations for various higher education institutions including the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for central university admissions and the post-graduate admissions in medical and University Grants Commission (UGC) courses
Functions
To identify partner institutions with adequate infrastructure from the existing schools and higher education institutions which would facilitate the conduct of online examinations without adversely impacting their academic routine.
To create a question bank for all subjects using modern techniques.
To establish a strong R&D culture as well as a pool of experts in different aspects of testing.
To provide training and advisory services to the institutions in India.
To collaborate with international organizations like ETS (Educational Testing Services).
To undertake any other examination that is entrusted to it by the Ministries/Departments of Government of India/State Governments
To undertake the reforms and training of school boards as well as other bodies where the testing standards should be comparable with the entrance examinations.
Structure
NTA is chaired by an eminent educationist appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) will be the Director-General to be appointed by the Government.
There will be a Board of Governors comprising members from user institutions
Issues with NA’s conduct
Contrary to the grand vision, the NTA conducts examinations in pen to paper mode that provides huge scope for malpractice — from the setting of the paper, to its printing, distribution and final delivery to a large number of examination centres — 4,750 for the NEET–UG, for admission in undergraduate medical courses
The idea was to standardise the quality of students aspiring to become doctors, which is an important concern given the varying standards of school boards across India
Its flawed implementation, the widespread leakage of question papers, the arbitrary manner of awarding grace marks, conducting a re-examination for just a handful of students, and now tinkering with the ranking have all made the whole process murky.
Decentralisation as a workable option
Reports of widespread cheating and leakages in examinations conducted at the national levels force us to reconsider and review the centralised testing mechanism for higher education institutions
Why cannot the central government restrict testing for entry to its own institutions and decentralise, where States fill up their own seats on the basis of entrance examinations?
This could be based on a standard template that can be prepared by the central government to ensure that the requisite standards are maintained for the test and the evaluator framework.
Testing bodies could be restructured to incorporate domain experts, testing experts and also IT measures of not just testing tools but also cyber safety and multiple types of safeguards that are necessary to conduct large-scale exams in a fair manner
Strong vested interests and criminal elements would want to do everything to undermine streamlined systems of merit-based entrance to professional education or to coveted universities and colleges.
This would include selling examination papers for financial gain.
Decentralising the examination processes to States and different governing entities could reduce the element of risk.
The central government’s role could be to mandate the standard to be followed for higher education institutions
Rejuvenation of the school system
With the emergence of national-level common entrance examinations for every professional course or university course, school-leaving examinations have become redundant and there are now ‘dummy’ schools.
Instead, coaching centres have mushroomed with the sole purpose of preparing students for these national examinations.
The growth of the coaching industry has damaged the schooling system insidiously and relentlessly
This trend has to be stemmed and the value of schools restored by introducing a percentage of school-leaving marks to the final score of the candidates’ entrance examination.
This was factored in the entrance examination to the Indian Institutes of Technology some years ago but was abandoned without debate
If we cannot safeguard merit, based on good school education, our schooling system will decay even further.
Standards of academic competency, hard work and good values that are built up at the school level can never be achieved at the time of higher studies, when a student is much older and is poised for the world of work.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently.
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