US bars Indian students from physiotherapy exam

Though the FSBPT has said it will devise a more secure NPTE for students from these countries by late 2011,the decision has caused quite a heartburn among Indian physiotherapy students,nearly 90 per cent of whom go to US for further studies.

The Indian Association of Physiotherapists has written to the FSBPT and the Foreign Ministry,complaining that the decision was discriminatory.

“MEA and the Indian Mission in the US have been requested to take up the matter with concerned authorities,” the HRD Ministry told the Lok Sabha last week.

The Foreign Physical Therapists in US,meanwhile,have also signed online petitions,requesting FSBPT to revoke its decision and find a more “equitable way” to deal with any proven test irregularities.

The FSBPT,however,seems unmoved. It has justified the ban,saying there was “compelling evidence…reflecting systematic and methodical sharing and distribution of recalled questions by significant a number of graduates of programs in the affected countries,as well as several exam preparation companies specifically targeted at these graduates”.

In 2007,FSBPT filed a criminal copyright prosecution case against St Louis Review Center in Manila,Philippines,and its owners after raids at the centre “revealed widespread sharing of hundreds of live test items”. Investigations concluded “the sale and sharing of recalled test questions extends beyond this single centre,and that the sharing of test items has continued despite its past efforts to ensure the security of the exam”. This compelled the FSBPT to impose the ban.

In its letters,the IAP said that “FSBPT found some problems in Philippines but to extend and generalise this trend to other nations is highly discriminatory and gross injustice”.

“If the FSBPT does find some people engaging in malpractices,they should penalise them instead of punishing an entire country,” said General Secretary of IAP Dr Sanjiv Kumar Jha. “That they propose to also bring in a new and more difficult exam for four countries is even more discriminatory and a way of preventing foreign physiotherapists from coming to the US.”