Engg entrance exams: Is two better than one?

The season of admissions has begun. This is when several lakh students from all over the country steel themselves for some of the most competitive examinations held anywhere in the world.  These are entrance examinations meant to determine which students stand a chance of getting enrolled into one of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), or to other Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) funded by the Central government.

Then there are state government-controlled and private engineering colleges which come under the state government.  There are separate entrance examinations for these.

At the same time, there are examinations for getting into medical colleges.  Some of these examinations are run by the Centre, some by the armed forces, and some by state governments.

It is not surprising to see students appearing for one examination after another.

In order to reduce the number of examinations and to create a common standard, the Central government decided in its programme of 1992, under the National Policy on Education (NPE), that there would be a common entrance examination on an all-India basis for admission into professional and technical programmes in India. This was sound in principle, but for one problem.  Education is governed both by Central and state laws.  Some state governments — notably Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Puduchery — opposed the implementation of a central examination over their respective state college admissions. States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh asked for wider consultations.  Some states agreed, while others kept silent.

To clear the air on such examinations, and to help students find a safe way out of this confusion, DNA had a Conversation with the brains behind some of the leading institutes that prepare students for such entrance examinations.  Among those present were (in alphabetical order) : Vishwas Deshpande, managing director, Vidyalankar Group of Educational Institutes;  Mohit Goel, chairman and managing director, Yukti Educational Services Private Ltd.; Lokesh Khandelwal, co-founder and executive director, Resonance Eduventures Pvt Ltd.; Vivek Khanna, co-founder, 21st Century; Vinay Kumar, CEO, Rao IIT; RK Sharma, managing director, AAKRATI Services Pvt Ltd.; and Praveen Tyagi, managing director, PACE Education Pvt Ltd..

The discussion moderated by DNA’s RN Bhaskar, brought out several interesting developments that are important both for policy-makers and students.

Given below are edited excerpts:
DNA: Why this need for a new examination?
Goel: Basically you have a three-tiered system of examination. You have the IIT joint entrance exams, primarily for the IITs and a few other institutes. You have the AIEEE exam for the second rung of institutes called NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and a host of other colleges. And then you have the various state CETs (common entrance examinations). These are also known as State Level Engineering Entrance Examinations or SLEEE. It is also referred to as the Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test or ISEET. The Central government has a jurisdiction on Central Government-funded institutions like IIT, NITs, etc. So it wants to bring out a common entrance examination for the first two rungs. But it cannot enforce something on the states, because education is a state subject as well. The Central Government can only advocate.

Naturally, some state governments have objected to a common entrance examination for all the three rungs.

Obviously, if there is a big difference in the level of the ISEET and the level of the state syllabus, then those studying for the state higher secondary board examinations will be at a disadvantage at the ISEET.  So there are complications to that.

Deshpande: Kapil Sibal, Union minister for education, has decided, subject to the acceptance of the IITs, to have a common exam and combine IIT-JEE and AIEEE. So he wants to club both exams together and form one exam.  He has left the option to the state about whether they want to adopt this exam, replace the state exam or even do away with the state exams. This is a novelty. Until recently, the Supreme Court had advocated that all admissions be done through a common entrance exam. But under the ISEET, the state government is allowed to offer a weightage of 40% to 100% for state level XII [or HSC] examinations.

DNA: How feasible is Sibal’s idea of having a common examination?
Deshpande: Sibal is saying that we should have a common exam. Currently, there are many tests being conducted. There is the IIT-JEE, AIEEE, BIT-SAT, VIT-EEE, etc. For the national level, yes, it is possible. But in the state you would ideally want to have a common curriculum across boards, which I don’t think is very practical. Each state is bound to have its own exam. Each state needs to have its own curriculum. It needs to teach its local history. Like in Maharashtra, you have to teach about Shivaji but maybe Bihar might not want to. So you have to give that kind of flexibility and freedom to states to design the curriculum. So the wish to have a common curriculum may not be very popular. That is what I feel.

Goel: I have a different point of view. As far as science and math are concerned, the curriculum will not change whether you are studying for the state board, IIT, or AIEEE. So for them it is definitely possible to have a similar syllabus. If you look at the syllabus of most of the state boards, there is a 90% commonality topic-wise. The intensity with which the topics are covered may, of course, vary from state to state.

Khandelwal: The Maharashtra government has also changed its syllabus. The books, which are now prescribed for Classes XI and XIII are better that NCERT’s books (NCERT is the Central government-funded National Council of Educational Research and Training) or even those by the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education).  And almost all states now are going towards this NCERT standard of syllabus. This exercise began around two years ago.

Tyagi: Let me share something with you. A few days ago there was a meeting of key government and college spokespersons for education at Sydenham college.  The plan rolled out was that there will be three different exams. Board exams (SSC and HSC), SAT type of exams and an advanced test, which will be on the current IIT format. How much of a weightage the state’s board exams will have at the IIT exams is not yet certain. I am still not sure what will ultimately happen.

Khandelwal: On February 23, a meeting was called by Kapil Sibal. He said that within two months, he will be coming out with a model question paper format for both aptitude tests and advanced subject tests.  Then the state governments will have to decide the weightage they want their board examinations to have. Or they may have a separate examination format altogether.

DNA: How do you view the desire of many state governments to give a weight of 40% to 100% to state board examinations?
Deshpande: Let’s understand why the weightage is being introduced. Over the years, what has happened is that students who are preparing for IITs have stopped going to college. They do not take it seriously. Some even drop out after Std XI and appear for Std XII privately.

Because of this, once the students get into engineering, they lose that rhythm of attending college. And that drastically affects their performance.

Goel:  Giving weightage to the Std XII board exam or not, will in no way change the daily life of a student, whether he attends college or not. Till 2003, there was 100% admission weightage for Std XII board exam marks for admission to state colleges. The moment you put in a board exam weightage, it means that the student now has to put in an extra effort to prepare for that exam. He will anyway go to a coaching class to prepare for it as he feels that college education is not sufficient to gain a competitive edge in the board exam. So whether the exam is given weightage or not, it will not ensure attendance.

Kumar: The objective was to make a child attend college. First they made 80% attendance compulsory, then they gave weightage to board examinations.  It won’t work. You should instead try to bring in competency into the system and then try to attract the child. But that also puts the onus on us to give him a good education for the board, the JEE well as for the advanced sessions.

Khanna: At the end of the day, competitive exams are like war and the execution of strategies. How many students get selected in a competitive examination? Just 2%.  So the students are like warriors. So when a student goes to Kota (in Rajasthan, which has the distinction of the largest number of successful candidates at the IIT-JEE), many are residents of Mumbai at one point of time.  We did not know about the integrated tie-up (of weights for board exams and admission to state engineering colleges). But parents told us that there is something like this and we should do it.  So coaching classes began training students for both the IIT-JEE and the board examinations.

And if attendance becomes compulsory, there will be colleges who will certify full attendance for a variety of reasons.

DNA:  How does the educational system view you guys.  As relevant players?
Khanna:  We are viewed with suspicion. But what is bad about coaching classes? There needs to be a distinction made between tuition classes and coaching classes. We are not tuition classes.

In any competition, there has to be a coach. Sachin Tendulkar has a coach. So are you going to call Tendulkar’s coach undesirable? But it is the coach who helped improve Tendulkar’s natural gift, and made him a scorer. That is why he gets a coach, and not some other person.

Sharma: People forget that we are basically trainers and not regular teachers.

Tyagi: People forget who is wrong and what is wrong.  If I am a teacher at school, it will be wrong if I am not teaching properly there. But if the students seek out a good coach in a coaching class to help him out, is that wrong?

Deshpande: At Vidylankar, we have coaching classes. But we also have our own engineering college. And do you know what an advisor to the AICTE said? “Because you come from private classes, you will grow better as an engineering college.” If you follow the right processes, the end result will always be right.

Tyagi: We know for sure that conceptual learning is good. When we were teaching for IITs also, we were saying the same thing. Let us look from the point of view of the child. So even if the child is told by the school that from now there will be weightage for board exams, because of which he attends six hours of school or college regularly, he will still come back to the teacher who provides him with conceptual clarity.

Once he has conceptual clarity, he is ready for anything: be it IIT or an aptitude test.

DNA: But at the same time, many coaching colleges are running mainstream educational institutions as well.  So is the line blurring? Or is it that you are entrenching yourselves in the mainstream institutional areas as well?
Goel: Let me tell you, this year, 90% of our admissions are happening in integrated programmes only. Now 15 colleges are integrated with the courses we offer.

Till recently, most of the colleges used to call us up and request us to help them integrate regular teaching with coaching for IITs. Now we are running both regular and coaching classes. And it is not only the need of coaching classes to integrate, the need is of colleges too.

Sharma: We are taking care of the board level and the competitive level examinations simultaneously. This is to enhance the knowledge of students. When we combine both, the results are very good.  Because everything is school-related. They know where to stop and where to go. And one more thing. We do the training. Let the state do the evaluation and the judging. In fact, to integrate both, we have aligned with Ram Ratna Vidya Mandir, the Gundecha Education Academy, and the Thakur College of Science and Commerce.

Tyagi: I tell education policy-makers that all the new policies you are making for the child right now, the new system of weightage — all of them are with the consent of principals who represent a failed education system. The child will not want to attend school if he feels he is not learning enough. I ask them, since we produce most of the students who actually end up becoming engineers, isn’t it time you consult people like us as well?

This is not some consumer-based product. It is nation building.

You should talk to the students, take their feedback. If you think students are getting carried away, speak to their parents. They will tell you why they are forced to pay Rs5 lakh for 2 years while their children don’t want to attend those so called schools and colleges.

So basically we need to raise some fundamental questions. These policy makers, are they teachers? Have they taught any students? On the other hand, we have created such goodwill in Maharashtra that we have been given special permissions by the Maharashtra government to run courses in around 12 junior science colleges.

The whole education system has to be inverted. Right now you have the politician at the top, you have some rich industrialist owning schools, then you have authoritative principals existing in those schools, and then you have teachers. And at the bottom of that pyramid you have the child, whose concern is not your concern. Once you invert this pyramid and make your approach child-centric, you understand that the child has to be at the top of the pyramid.