Common college entry test for all streams by 2013: Sibal

The Union government plans to introduce a single national-level entrance exam for students from all streams for entry into higher education from 2013, on the lines of the Scholastic Aptitude Test in the US. 

Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal said a ‘task force’ on how to go about this will be named in a month. Terming the decision a “historic” one, he said it would have two years to decide how to structure the said exam, including how much weightage to give the school-leaving examination. 

“The idea is that there will be a single entrance exam for each stream,” Sibal said in a speech at a meeting here of the Council of Boards of School Education in India (COBSE). The meeting had representatives from 20 different school boards. 

“The common entrance exam for class 12 students will have synergy with the (proposed) board exam,” Sibal said, while noting that the idea would have to be formally presented by him to the Central Advisory Board of Education, formally the apex advisory body in this regard, with state education ministers as its members. 

At today’s meeting, COBSE endorsed the contents of a core curriculum for senior secondary classes in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, which had been put together earlier. “There is unanimity among the school boards on the core curriculum prepared on science and mathematics,” Sibal said. He added that a similar core curriculum would be shortly prepared in commerce. 

The recommendation to have a single entrance test for higher studies had been made by the Yash Pal committee on ‘Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education’. 

The idea, said Sibal, is “to have a level-playing field and reduce the burden on students who are appearing for multiple tests to get into these disciplines”. 

At present, universities follow different practices in selecting students for undergraduate courses. While some of them take students on the basis of marks, some hold entrance tests. 

Recommendations to move in the proposed direcion have been made by various educationists from time to time. Some streams have already taken an initiative in this regard, as with entry to business schools.