An association of private schools has written to the Union Education Minister expressing apprehensions that the introduction of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) from the 2022-23 academic session may encourage a “coaching culture” among students. This comes after UGC chairman M Jagadish. Kumar on Monday said that central universities will have to use CUET scores and not class 12 marks for admitting students to undergraduate programmes.
Kumar had said that the syllabus of CUET will be in line with the model syllabus of class 12 of NCERT. However the National Conference on Progressive Schools (NPSC), an association of senior secondary school principals in India and abroad, welcomed the move to introduce CUET and said it would “relieve the stress of appearing for multiple entrance examinations” for students. , it also flagged some different concerns, including the fact that it might encourage a coaching culture.
NPSC called for a “comprehensive consultation process” with all stakeholders dealing with school education. “While one of the objectives of introducing CUET is to tackle the high cut-off marks obtained by students of some state boards, this problem could have been addressed differently by devising a rationalization structure to bring about parity with CBSE,” The letter written on Thursday said.
It also said that this batch of students is currently preparing for CBSE Class II exams and the prospect of appearing in CUET may be stressful for them. So we think CUET could have been introduced next year to create more awareness among the students who have enough to prepare themselves mentally to take such common entrance test after their final board. There will be time
NPSC chairperson Sudha Acharya said that CUET will be based on NCERT books, this will encourage students of state boards and ICSE to take coaching as they follow different books.
“NEP 2020 envisages dismantling the culture of coaching. Unfortunately no weightage to class XII will lead to the spread of coaching culture.” In a situation, schools will become the only medium to clear CUET.
“There will be no motivation or encouragement for the students and teachers to try their best. The entire focus of NEP 2020 for school education has weakened. To avoid this problem, it is necessary that at least 50 percent weightage should be given in the board examination.
CUET will have three parts: Compulsory Language, 27 Subject Domains, and General Test on Quantitative Reasoning, Logical & Analytical Reasoning, Numerical Ability, and General Knowledge & Current Affairs. “Students who do not have aptitude for maths or numerical or quantitative reasoning will find it difficult to score well in the third part without coaching. Moreover, students who want to move from one stream to another for college admission will find it extremely difficult to choose the subject domain in CUET.”
Calling this a misconception, NTA Director General Vineet Joshi told ThePrint, “We do not want to encourage coaching culture, students should not go to coaching classes to clear the CUET exam. The part of the question paper will be based on NCERT books and state board syllabus.
“There is a misconception that we will use only NCERT books to prepare question papers… This is not true, we are also looking at other board syllabus for question papers.”
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