Union Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal recently hinted that Class XII students may require more than 60 per cent (the current percentage requirement) to appear for the IIT-JEE exam. Notwithstanding the fact that the suggestion raised a major debate, after which Sibal backtracked, this is not the first instance of the HRD ministry floating an idea to reform the JEE system.
In 2005, too, a committee was set up by the Joint Admission Board to review the JEE which observed a correlation between the performance of the students in IITs and that in school as well as in the JEE. It also noted that the results of screening tests and final tests in the JEE were correlated. So, it recommended a minimum eligible mark in the class XII Board exams for admission to IITs.
The recommendation was to permit only those students who were in the upper 2 per cent of Class X and XII — to be determined by school boards — to take JEE. The ministry hoped that it would help coaching classes shift their focus to the board exams.
This proposal was not accepted by the HRD ministry and 60 per cent in Class XII was fixed as minimum eligibility. Moreover, a note from the ministry said that the sole aim of coaching institutes is to teach students to ‘crack’ the JEE and “setting question papers to select 5,000 out of 350,000 aspirants makes it mandatory for them to be set at a high level. JEE has become an examination which can be cleared only by the coached though it is meant to find students with 'raw intelligence' at the higher secondary level.”
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