Gujarat: Parents meet education minister over exam pattern change

Source: dnaindia.com

Parents of Class 12 Science students on Tuesday made a representation to the state education minister, demanding to continue with old system of board examination rather than having only descriptive questions. As per the new system, the boards would have 100% descriptive questions.

Citing this years poor results of Class 12 Science as a result for examination change, the parents, in their letter said, “As this is first year of NCERT text books, students are finding difficult to cope with new syllabus. Moreover, all the exams such as NEET, JEE and others have MCQs in the entire paper. Critical thinking is very important in such subjects. In most of the exams, focus is more on memory rather than writing ability or learning ability. First time in seven years that the board results have been the poorest. It is not a case where students have suddenly become weak in studies.”

Speaking about the same, Krushi Shah (name changed), a parent said, “For exams in 2020, students do not have past papers or paper style to refer to. Due to this, students are under stress a month before appearing for NEET or JEE. For rural children, NCERT syllabus is only difficult. In such a scenario, if exam pattern is changed, they will have to suffer the most. CBSE is on the verge of reducing the syllabus to reduce stress among students. At a time when CBSE is bringing changes in its board exams from 2020, why does not Gujarat government do anything? Above this, CBSE allows students to take practicals in their own school. If this continues, then number of students opting for class 12 Science will reduce.”

Our demand is only to keep 50% MCQ as well as 50% descriptive. Students are not habituated to write descriptive answers. The minister has given a positive response and assured us a reply in few days, she said.

In semester system (earlier), students had to appear for two exams a year whereas now they appear for only one exam. Syllabus to remember has increased and so is the descriptive questions. Earlier out of 400-mark question papers, 300 were MCQs. Now out of 100, 50 marks worth of questions are MCQs and the rest are descriptive.

NEET result likely today

The National Testing Agency (NTA) is likely to release NEET result 2019 on Wednesday. The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2019 result will be available on NTA’s official website ntaneet.nic.in. This year, over 1.4 million candidates appeared for NTA NEET medical examination.