- For any common Indian family, irrespective of their status in society, imparting education is considered an extremely important aspect not only for the betterment of the individual but also the family and society at large. Thus, the emphasis laid on quality of education is paramount for most of us. Since the public education sector is found wanting on the quality front, the private education sector thrives across the nook and corner of the country. Parents struggling to sustain dignified living will undergo extra challenges to ensure their children are provided with the best of the best quality education with the sole hope of reaping the benefits later. Of course, professional education is considered the gateway to solving the challenges of life.
PC: Vijiram & Ravi
- As you are aware, qualifying for a higher education institution is governed by the entrance tests conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). However, the agency has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent times because of a huge fiasco with the botched NEET exams. Despite the Union Education Minister’s statement that NTA will be investigated, and the national testing system will be reformed, is unlikely to reassure examinees who appeared for NEET and the just canceled UGC-NET at this point. While it’s good that fixing accountability in NTA is now a ministerial concern, no fundamental change for the better can happen without asking tough questions on the entire process of conducting centralized exams.
- Sadly, the scale of NTA’s failures bears repetition. From CUET to JEE, NEET, and UGC-NET, there have been too many glitches, including those that have raised big questions about the integrity and competence of the testing agency. Such has been NTA’s mismanagement that arguments against a single-exam authority have again resurfaced. So scattered is the agency’s implementation and nodes of accountability that weeks after the NEET fiasco, the only action has been the cancellation of the exam for grace mark students – and empty platitudes. Absent was any sense of accountability, as expected. Mind you, such centralized tests, the gateway to careers for lakhs of students, are in essence a public good.
PC: Scroll.in
- This is being squandered wholesale during implementation. Implementers are largely the private sector, a burgeoning ecosystem of service providers – exam centers, IT companies, and medium-scale computer operations, which have sprung up solely to be the outsourced infrastructure required to conduct these mammoth tests. NTA cannot vouch for cybersecurity at thousands of centers where online tests are held. Nor for invigilators and personnel staffing physical centers. It leaves the system vulnerable to attacks, physical and remote, notwithstanding CERT-In security certificates, which are required per bid rules. Paper leaks, impersonation or proxies, and hacks are inevitable in such an unwieldy, loosely controlled organization, CCTVs and audits aren’t enough. Any new NTA team will not be effective unless old structural flaws of the NTA are fixed.
