The National Testing Service (NTS), a nodal agency, aims to free up institutions such as the CBSE, IITs, IIMs, and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that are currently tasked to conduct national-level exams for admission to medical, engineering and business schools.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech on Wednesday announced setting up an autonomous and self-sustainable "National Testing Agency" for conducting entrance exams to higher education institutions in a "professional way".
The National Testing Service (NTS), a nodal agency, aims to free up institutions such as the CBSE, IITs, IIMs, and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that are currently tasked to conduct national-level exams for admission to medical, engineering and business schools.
"This would free the CBSE and the AICTE from administrative responsibility, so that they can focus more on academics," Jaitley said without mentioning the deadline to establish this body.
What Jaitely didn't share in his speech was that several governments in the past have proposed and, subsequently, shelved the NTS for reasons best known to them.
The Programme of Action, 1992 for implementation of the National Policy on Education (1986) first advocated the setting up of a national level body for entrance exams. Almost 15 years later, the National Knowledge Commission (2006-2009) also proposed National Talent Service for conducting independent test.
Most recently, the Ashok Misra Committee of Eminent Persons which was formed to review the JEE system (2015) also recommended constituting an independent body for conducting these exams.
"Nothing moved even when the CBSE had to conduct All India Pre Medical Test examination twice in 2015 because of paper leak," says a medical student.
More than 40 lakh students appear for seven tests — CAT, JEE (Main), JEE (Advanced), GATE, CMAT, NEET, NET — conducted by the CBSE, IITs, IIMs and AICTE every year.
However, it was part of the Central Advisory Board of Education agenda last year, following which the MHRD readied the Cabinet note on the National Testing Service (NTS) in December 2016.
"The NTS is expected to be on the lines of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the United States. It would be registered as a society under the Indian Societies Act by June 2017. It will conduct the UGC-NET exam by 2017 end followed by NEET and JEE from 2018," said an MHRD official.
Initially, the government will provide a corpus of Rs 50 crore to NTS. Thereafter, examination fee paid by 40 lakh students should make it fully self-reliant to meet all operational expenses, says the official.
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