More online exams, policy to allot centres: entrance exam reforms a govt panel has suggested

What has the panel recommended for the NTA?

After the NEET-UG paper leak earlier this year, and the cancellation of UGC-NET a day after it was held on the grounds that the paper was leaked on the darknet, the NTA, which conducts these exams, was at the centre of a controversy over its functioning.

Noting that the NTA has “outstretched itself to accommodate diverse requests from many test indenting agencies” including taking up recruitment tests, and its “high dependence” on service providers and outsourced agencies to conduct these exams, the panel has suggested that the NTA should primarily conduct entrance examinations, and enhancing this scope to include other examinations can be considered after the NTA’s capacity is augmented.

The NTA now relies heavily on contractual and outsourced staff, and in addition to entrance exams, conducts exams for recruitment in central universities. Since it was set up in 2018, the NTA has administered 244 tests, and the number of candidates registered for the tests has grown from an average of 67 lakh per year from 2019-2021, to 122 lakh per year in 2022-23.

The panel has recommended that the NTA Director General who heads the body, be assisted by two additional director generals and directors assigned to specific tasks, along with staffing the NTA with “domain-specific human resources” and a “leadership team with domain knowledge”.

What has the panel said about establishing links with State and district officials and what parallels have been drawn with conducting elections?

It has suggested involvement of State and district-level authorities, “in the way elections are conducted”, through coordination committees at these two levels with officials of the NTA, the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the police, and the Intelligence Bureau. These committees are to prepare strategies to ensure transparent and fair exams, identify testing centres and prepare for the safe transportation of question papers with security from the police or paramilitary forces.

For security, similar to polling booth operations, the panel has suggested that test centres be sealed in the presence of district administration and police before the exam, and that these centres be guarded till they are de-sealed for the exam. Testing centres are to be monitored via CCTVs, with an overarching CCTV monitoring centre at the district level.

Like polls have presiding officers, a ‘presiding officer’ of the NTA is to be the overall in-charge of the test.

What are the suggestions for the testing process and testing centres?

The panel has recommended multi-session testing, spread over a few days to a couple of weeks, and multi-stage testing (like JEE Main and Advanced) for NEET-UG. To prevent “suspicious and unusual” allocation of testing centres, it has suggested that a testing centre allocation policy be ensured with candidates being assigned a testing centre in their district of residence.

Setting more than three sets of question papers, sending encrypted question papers to confidential servers at testing centres where they can then be printed using high-speed printers, and candidates can then take these exams in pen-and-paper mode, are among recommendations for secure pen-and-paper testing. Another model suggested is delivering the question paper via computer to each candidate, and the candidates then recording responses in an OMR sheet.

For testing centres, it has recommended setting up a testing centre in each district, along with mobile testing centres for rural or remote areas.

To verify the authenticity of the candidate, the panel suggests a ‘Digi-Exam’ system, much like DigiYatra, where the primary data identifying the candidate is recorded at the application stage and their biometrics at the testing centre, and this data be used to prevent impersonation and verify authenticity at the stages of application, testing, admission and study.

What are the long-term measures the panel recommends?

It has suggested “harmonization and unification of tests” for admissions at the undergraduate level – uniform eligibility and admission criteria in terms of the number of stages for tests, number of sessions, mode of testing and number of times a test is conducted in a year.

It also recommends migration to ‘computer adaptive testing’ – instead of the same set of questions being offered to everybody, computer-adaptive testing is a form of computerised testing in which questions are selected based on the test-taker’s ability. This ability is determined and updated based on responses during the test. Test-takers are tested on different combinations of questions, with this improving security and assessing individual abilities.

Noting that computer-based tests (CBT) with examinations in multiple shifts “has now become the preferred mode of examination and a sure way forward”, the panel has recommended that collaboration with Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas to develop digital infrastructure that will allow them to serve as computer-based testing centres.

It stated: “It is possible to integrate such testing centres from KVs, NVs, universities and institutes to establish a nationwide network of about 400-500 testing centres within a time frame of a year or so, which will provide about 2.0-2.5 lakh testing capacity for conducting CBT in one session nationwide. Eventually, one could envisage that every district headquarter in the country should have a standardised and well-equipped CBT Testing Centre.”

So far, the NTA has been conducting its examinations in government-run schools and colleges, institutes recognised by the AICTE, and private centres where service providers conduct the exams. Setting up more computer-based testing centres is also expected to help lower the NTA’s reliance on service providers.