Rectifying NTA Exams Disaster

July 12, 2024 /Posted byEducationWorld

Reports of widespread cheating, favouritism and swindles in NEET-UG 2024 have generated the first storm of the new Parliament convened on June 24. That’s bad news for the weakened BJP/NDA 3.0 government, and especially for re-inducted Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan – writes Summiya Yasmeen With evidence emerging on a daily basis that there was widespread cheating and bribery in the NEET-UG (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance-Test-Undergraduate) 2024 examination written by 2.4 million school-leavers aspiring for admission into medical colleges countrywide, the newly sworn-in BJP/Modi government at the Centre has got off to a shaky start. Coincidently results of NEET-UG — a centralised national exam for aspirant medical practitioners introduced in 2016 — were announced on the very day (June 4) that General Election 2024 results were declared by the Election Commission of India. In the recently concluded General Election, upending all expectation and opinion poll forecasts, the ruling BJP was cut to…

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“An uneducated Indian is not a free Indian. India’s education system remains trapped in regulations that reward compliance over learning and scarcity over opportunity. The solution to exam leaks, coaching factories and unemployability is not more licensing, but more supply. We need more schools, more colleges, more competition and more education entrepreneurs. A 21st-century education must not only impart knowledge but encourage questioning. India does not need fewer cooks in the kitchen; it needs more cooks, more recipes and fewer bureaucrats guarding empty plates.”

- Manish Sabharwal, The Indian Express, (2/6)

India’s examination system rests on a foundational assumption that the process is fair, even when outcomes disappoint, and once that trust erodes, the system loses its legitimacy. This is not merely a technical controversy but a credibility crisis, because digitising evaluation is not the same as reforming it. Technology can assist evaluation, but it cannot replace the intellectual responsibility that fair assessment demands. The controversy has shown that technology has not removed subjectivity or error, it has merely shifted them into a different format. Educational institutions cannot run experiments on students whose futures depend on these results, and the obligation is to anticipate failure before implementation, not offer explanations after the damage is done.

- P John J Kennedy, The Indian Express, (26/5)

Rectifying NTA Exams Disaster

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