4.1L questions in 12 languages: ’21 JEE-M to be held in 4 cycles

4.1L questions in 12 languages: ’21 JEE-M to be held in 4 cycles

Registration For Feb Cycle Likely To Start Later This Week

Manash.Gohain@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:  15.12.2020

Sixteen days of tests, 384 question papers in 12 languages and 4.14 lakh questions will define the scale of the Joint Entrance Examination (Main), to be held in four cycles starting February 2021, for admission to engineering courses. Registration of candidates for the February cycle is likely to start later this week.

JEE (Main) 2021 will be conducted once each month, from February to May. The results too would be announced in four to five days so as to give a window of around a week to candidates to apply for the subsequent month’s test.

Amit Khare, secretary, ministry of education, said: “States have their own education Boards which conduct their exams between February and March. Due to the Covid situation, Boards may reschedule their calendar. This is for the benefit of the students so that they get ample opportunity as per their convenience. Moreover, tests like SAT, GRE or TOEFL are conducted multiple times in a year. This will be in sync with international best practices.”

Prof Abhay Karandikar, director, IIT-Kanpur, said, “Conducting it four times is a good move. NTA conducted exams successfully even during Covid times and the agency has the capability to meet the challenges. This will ensure a fair opportunity and much greater flexibility to the candidates.”

However, some experts believe multiple tests would increase stress for students. Ashok Ganguly, educationist and former CBSE chairperson, said: “Allowing the child to appear four times a year will not serve any purpose. It will increase the burden on children who will continue to attend coaching classes to perform better next time and hamper regular studies. It may also lead to frustration. So two opportunities seem sufficient.”

Some others also feel multiple tests may dilute quality. A former IIT director said, “By conducting the same exam so many times, questions will get repeated as the syllabus is fixed, unlike TOEFL or GRE where there is no fixed syllabus. Over a period of time students will mug up and score high. This will have adverse effect on quality.”

NTA, however, believes that the decision to conduct the exam multiple times in a disaggregated fashion is reasonable and suitable in the present times. “Between February and May, candidates will either sit for the Board exams or competitive exams. The coaching phase would be over by then. Also, it is not necessary that all candidates will appear in all four tests. In the present context, situations across the states are different due to the pandemic and we don’t know how and when they will conduct the exams. So candidates will at least get two chances to appear,” said a member of the governing body of NTA and a psychometric expert.

He said: “The assessment is decided on the purpose of the examination, which is to see engineering aptitude and therefore it is not necessary that the paper has to be difficult. JEE (Advanced) forces a student to go beyond the syllabus as its questions are of undergraduate level and it creates a situation of bunching at the top.”

With the inclusion of Punjabi, JEE (Main) will be conducted in 12 languages in 2021. “A very good step to give all children an equal opportunity to attempt an examination in the language they are comfortable with. It will be challenging (for NTA), but one has to rise to the occasion,” said Anuradha Joshi, Principal, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi.

Times View: The willingness to undertake this ambitious exercise indicates the confidence of the National Testing Agency. However, confidence must be backed with rigour. The JEE exams are taken by lakhs of industrious students dreaming of a better future. The NTA should ensure that the examination process is error-free and hassle-free. That’s the real challenge.