Board exam marks to get a weightage in IIT-JEE

A committee of IIT directors are planning to conduct a meeting by the end of this month to discuss the issues relating to the revamping of the engineering entrance examination commencing from 2013-14. They will also discuss launch of a new avatar of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in 2013. The IIT directors will also discuss some major issues such as:

• Current examination format
• Single all-India entrance exam for IITs as well as other engineering institutes in India
• To decide on the weightage to be assigned to board exam scores
• Advanced knowledge and aptitude and some other issues

From several months, T.Ramaswami committee has worked hard to formulate a report on an "Alternative System for admission into engineering colleges". Finally, the report has been submitted by the committee to Human Resource Development Ministry. Some of its highlights are:

Normalization of scores:

The committee has concluded the report and it has been found that most of the experts given nod to the decision to make school exam board score an key factor for selection in the engineering institutes. It has become extremely important to accept the board exam scores to control students' dependence on coaching centers for cracking IIT-JEE. In turn, it will also attract more bright students to join IIT JEE.

However, doubts have been still raised on whether the marks assigned by different boards can be normalized. The Ramaswami committee has concluded that normalization of marks is quite feasible.

The committee has also asked the Indian Statistical Institute to find out the normalization methodologies for school board scores by conducting pilot tests across 4 school boards: CBSE, ICSE/CISCE, the boards of Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The result of the test conducted by ISI has helped the committee in coming to a conclusion that normalization of percentile marks across boards is really feasible. ISI is planning further to extend this methodology to other boards as well.

Online Survey:

The Ramaswami committee has also conducted an online survey and concluded that:

• More than 85% are in favor of all-India single entrance test for admission in an engineering college and want reforms.
• 70% has given preference to single entrance exam with provisions for testing both advanced knowledge and aptitude.
• 66% were in favor of factoring in school board scores.
• 34% disfavored the inclusion of school scores due to fear of non-uniformity across school boards.

Recommendations of the committee:

• An expert committee can be assigned with the task of interacting with the ISI officials to work on the methodology of normalizing board scores.
• JEE should consider a mix of school and national test performances to select students
• A global agency help should be sought for conducting the aptitude examination
• IITs should help set a question paper for National Screening Test based on objective examination models and conduct the examinations for the year 2012-13

Source: Richha Bhatnagar (Shiksha Team)