CHANGES IN JEE 2017

After examining the report of Ashok Misra Committee and considering the public feedback, Ministry of Human Resource Development has notified the following changes in the JEE pattern for 2017 : 

1. The performance of the students in the 12th Class Examination shall be a crucial parameter for determining the eligibility of the student for the JEE examination. 

2. For the candidates to qualify in the JEE Examination, they shall have secured at least 75% marks or be in the top 20 percentile in the 12th Class Examination conducted by respective Boards. For SC/ST students this condition shall be relaxed to 65% marks.

3. The present system of giving 40% weightage for the 12th Class marks in calculating the ranks in the JEE Main shall be dispensed with. 

4. All other JEE Examination systems shall remain unchanged. 

Weightage To Class XII marks For JEE Main To Be Dropped From 2017

SOURCE: INDIAN EXPRESS

The NDA government has decided to roll back its predecessor’s decision to give 40 per cent weightage to an engineering aspirant’s Class XII Board marks for admission to the National Institutes of Technology, three years after it was introduced. The change, which will be effective from 2017, is expected to be notified soon.

Currently, the 31 NITs admit students based on all-India ranks prepared with 60 per cent weightage to a candidate’s JEE (Main) performance and 40 per cent weightage to his Class XII marks.

According to sources, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, who is the chairperson of the NIT Council, has decided that from 2017, NITs will no longer use Board performance to calculate ranks. They will, instead, follow the IIT practice. The IITs grant admission only if a candidate, apart from qualifying JEE (Advanced), is either in the top 20 percentile of his or her school Board or has scored at least 75 per cent.

The Indian Express had reported on October 28, 2015, that an expert committee appointed by the government had found the UPA-II decision — taken by the then HRD minister Kapil Sibal to reduce the influence of coaching and bridge the gender and urban-rural divide in classrooms — had not served those purposes. Sibal had argued that according weightage to Class XII Board performance would help students focus on school education and wean them away from coaching classes.

A nine-member panel, headed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing director Rajat Moona, studied the admission data of 31 NITs over the last three years and found that instead of registering a decline, the influence of coaching among candidates taking the JEE (Main) grew by four percentage points. The number of JEE (Main) examinees assisted by tuitions increased from approximately 15 per cent of the total in 2012 to 19 per cent in 2014.

When the NIT Council met in October last year, Irani did not approve any changes to JEE (Main) 2016 and deferred the decision for 2017. She is now learnt to have agreed to the panel’s suggestions for next year’s entrance test.

“Both IITs and NITs will follow the same system and admit students solely on the basis of the entrance examination. The threshold for Board marks will only be a pre-condition for admission,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.

As for the growing influence of the coaching industry, the official said, “Students go to coaching institutes because the JEE assesses candidates on advanced or tougher curriculum which is not covered in schools. We have got an assurance from IITs and NITs that they will prepare questions based on the Class XII syllabus prescribed by school Boards.”

THE proposed NAT, to replace JEE Advanced, will have English as a subject!!!

SOURCE: DECCAN CHRONICLE

A high level meeting of directors of all Indian Institutes of Technology will be held in the city in the third week of this month to decide the fate of the JEE for admissions to IITs and NITs. The Centre plans to replace the JEE with the National Aptitude Test, which will be conducted along the lines of the SAT in the US.
The new exam will include English as a subject. If approved, it will be in place for the 2017-18 academic year. This has the potential of removing a large number of students who hail from non-English medium streams of education.
IITs are said to be proposing the same two-stage exam for IIT admissions but want to replace first stage “the JEE (Mains)” with the NAT. The JEE (Advanced) will continue as second stage.
In stage-I exam, the IITs directors are proposing to include English as an additional subject since students coming from non-English medium backgrounds were facing difficulties at the IITs where the medium of instruction is English.
The Centre wants to test the English proficiency of students at the screening level. The IITs had held two rounds of discussion earlier.

Helping Hand View: We totally oppose the inclusion of English in such testing system as this will virtually hit the Hindi medium students dream of JEE.

NITs SET TO GO IIT WAY

SOURCE:TELEGRAPH INDIA

The National Institutes of Technology may no longer give weightage to Class XII board marks while admitting BTech students from next year if the institutions and the government have their way.

An NIT director said the institutes, along with other centrally funded technical institutions (CFTIs) like the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), were more likely to admit students on the basis of their JEE Advanced score - like the IITs do.

"There will be no need for giving weightage to board marks," the director told this newspaper.

Under the existing system, the IITs admit students based on how they perform in the JEE Advanced, the second exam in the two-tier test after the CBSE-conducted JEE Main.

Over 12 lakh students appear for the JEE Main, but only the top two lakh are eligible to take the JEE Advanced.

While the IITs don't give weightage to board marks, aspirants need to score at least 75 per cent in their board exam or be among the top 20 percentile holders - irrespective of their performance in JEE Advanced - to be eligible for selection.

The NITs, IIITs and a few other engineering institutions - which don't follow any eligibility criteria but could introduce cut-offs once the weightage for board marks goes - have been admitting students on the basis of a 60:40 system. Under this system, 60 per cent weightage is given to the JEE Main score and 40 per cent to Class XII board marks.

The idea behind the weightage for board marks, introduced under the earlier government, was students would focus more on school education instead of private tuitions to crack entrance exams.

But two panels set up by this government, one headed by IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar and another by Rajat Moona, director-general, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, had recommended scrapping the weightage for board marks while admitting students to the NITs from 2016.

The Moona committee found that the percentage of students taking private coaching had increased after the system of giving weightage to board marks was introduced.

The HRD ministry then set up another panel, headed by IIT Roorkee chairman Ashok Misra. In its report submitted last November, this committee, too, said the weightage given to board marks now for NIT admissions should be scrapped and there should be one engineering entrance test, possibly from 2018.

But aspiring engineers, this panel said, should have to clear a SAT-like National Aptitude Test to be eligible to appear for the entrance exam.

Sources in the HRD ministry said there was agreement among the IITs and other CFTIs that from 2017, students should be admitted based on how they did in their JEE Advanced.

The NIT director this paper spoke to said the JEE Main was likely to stay in 2017, but as a filter for the JEE Advanced.

The Mishra committee suggested that the government set up a national testing service (NTS) as an independent body to conduct the aptitude test, modelled on the SAT, held for admissions to US colleges.

HRD ministry sources said the NTS might be set up this year and start operating from 2018. The aptitude tests, they added, might be held more than once every year so that students can improve their performance.

Testing authority planned on lines of SAT, GRE

COURTESY: TIMES OF INDIA
HRD ministry is going to the Cabinet with its proposal to set up National Authority for Testing (NAT). To be established as a society, NTA will be a lean body and conduct aptitude test for class IX, X, XI, XII students.

NAT will consult top experts of psychometrics, both in India and abroad and will even take help of Educational Testing Service that conducts tests like SAT and GRE. For the first few years, NAT will be fully funded by the government but eventually the idea is to make it financially autonomous. "We expect that apart from conducting aptitude tests that will help IITs in filtering students for Joint Entrance Examination, NAT in future will be able to conduct similar tests parallel to other entrance examinations," one official said. "We hope that in future aptitude test score will become mandatory for admission across streams, be it engineering or humanities," he said.

HRD ministry is hopeful that Cabinet clearance will be in place so that NAT tests are conducted at least twice in the first year (likely to be 2017) in order to shortlist 4 lakh students who can appear for JEE. After the first year, NTA will conduct aptitude test four times each year. The tests will be designed to judge the scientific and innovative thinking of candidates and cannot be gamed through coaching. JEE, on the lines of the current JEE (Advanced), will test the students on their knowledge of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. From JEE, ranks will be issued to 40,000-plus students who can seek admission in IITs and NITs based on common counselling.

Explaining the reason behind aptitude test from class IX, one official said, "It will help assess the child correctly. It will also give a better insight into strength of a child so that he can direct his energy in that direction rather than unnecessarily stressing himself for admission to engineering courses."

NIT BOARD MARKS RELOOK

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH

A panel formed by the government to review the system of admitting BTech students in NITs has suggested scrapping the weightage given to board marks, setting the stage for a possible reversal of the initiative that had laid stress on schooling.

Under the existing system, 40 per cent weightage is given to board marks and 60 per cent to the JEE-Main score.

But the panel, at a meeting last week, concluded that the standard of school boards had deteriorated and private coaching had increased since the system was started two years ago.

Curbing the impact of private coaching on engineering entrance tests was one of the reasons the new system was started. Another objective was to widen the scope for rural students. If the government eventually accepts the suggestions of the panel, set up by the HRD ministry, the initiative would trace a full circle.

The panel will meet again next week to draft a report. On October 1, HRD minister Smriti Irani will chair a meeting of the NIT Council, the top body on matters related to the 31 National Institutes of Technology, to take a final decision.

Two members of the panel, which includes IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar and NIT Patna director Asok De, said the committee was unanimous that the weightage system should be scrapped. "The standard of the majority of the boards has gone down. The distribution of marks suggests a sizable number of students securing marks above the mean or average, which normally does not happen," one member told The Telegraph.

IIT entrance may have a written section from 2017

 Getting into an IIT might get tougher from the 2017 session. The IIT Joint Admission Committee is considering adding a third component — a written section — after the Mains and Advance tests.

This new segment will add another layer of complexity to an already tough examination where every single percentile counts. The board hopes to curtail guess-work by candidates and force them to exhibit their actual grasp of a subject. It will necessitate an overhaul of the evaluation system but the committee is ready to do that if it improves the quality of students.

A feature of MCQ tests across the world is that candidates make blind guesses for 10-15% questions and jog their memory to attempt some others without having a grasp on the concept, said a source in the committee. This is all the more true for India where rote learning is almost a part of education culture and IIT-JEE coaching a multi-crore business.
"Candidates sometimes use the method of elimination to choose an answer. We want to minimize that. The best way to do this is to make candidates write the answer rather than tick a box," a senior IIT professor said. MCQs are a standard method to assess a candidate's comprehension, analysis or application skills, but an essay-type section will force them to show how much they truly understand a concept and how they arrange their thoughts to develop an argument, the teacher added.

Incorporating the first change — getting candidates to write on their own — can be done with little effort, said a source. But with over 13 lakh candidates appearing the test, won't evaluation be a problem? Not all answersheets will go for evaluation, said the source. While all candidates will have to attempt the essay section, their answers will be evaluated only if they get a certain score in the IIT-JEE (Advance), said a source.

"We are trying to develop a machine-readable answerscript. We need to make some changes in the computer programming so that it can read the near possible answers and accordingly evaluate the answerscripts," said a source. For instance, machines can read numbers or names of chemical compounds, such as hydrogen peroxide, but a separate programme is needed for giving credits to part answers. "This will take some time," an official said. If the committee okays the proposal, the written segment may be introduced in 2017.

Experts welcome the proposed change to break the monopoly of mushrooming coaching centres. "The entrance examination has already been bifurcated. The coaching-centre hegemony will be further curtailed if a written component is introduced and students have to find a solution to the problem," said a tutor at a major coaching centre.
Source: TOI