New JEE aims to make schooling meaningful

COIMBATORE: The proposed new admission pattern for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), under which an aspirant will be ranked on his/her combined performance in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and Class XII Board Exam, is aimed at making school education meaningful.In a comprehensive note on the proposed change circulated to his counterparts, IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Baruah has pointed out that the current JEE-based admission process is coaching-driven at the expense of school education.“Students attend coaching institutes for one to two years. They enroll in a school which they never attend and many do not even know the name of the school they attend,” he has said. This resulted in absurdities like institutes telling students to drop difficult topics and instead concentrate on a few selected topics in each subject. and “the ridiculous situation where students are entering the IIT system without learning, say calculus!” Baruah has said in the note. The proposed percentile system would give 40 per cent weightage for an aspirant’s performance in the Class XII exam and 60 per cent marks scored in a two-part JEE - Main and Advanced. The pattern has been arrived at in consultation with the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and is based on the recommendations of two separate JEE review committees headed by Prof Damodar Acharya and Department of Science and Technology Secretary T Ramasami. Baruah contends that there does not seem to be any other way where weightage can be given to Board exams that is fairer than this method.