CHENNAI: Marks scored in the Class XII board examinations are likely to become a key determining factor in addition to the performance in the
nerve-wracking Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission into the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by 2011.

In a couple of months, a pan-IIT committee constituted by the union human resources development (HRD) ministry to suggest reforms to the JEE is expected to submit its report recommending ways and means to factor in the marks scored by students in higher secondary examinations while preparing the IIT merit list. A meeting of all IIT directors and JEE representatives held in Chennai over the weekend discussed the proposed changes.

The proposal comes amidst widespread concern among top academicians over the current IIT admission system which is entirely dependant on JEE scores and ignores academic performances in board exams. The inherent weakness of such a system is that the IITs have been able to largely attract only students who have been "conditioned for the JEE" by high profile coaching centres in Kota and Hyderabad. Such students who lack "raw intelligence", as described by IIT Madras director M S Ananth in the past, are sometimes at sea after entering the campus.

"We hope to devise a methodology to compute a normalised class XII cut-off eligibility score for each educational board (CBSE, ICSE, and State Boards). If it is approved, only students who have scored this cut-off mark would become eligible to appear for the JEE and consecutively for admission," IIT Madras deputy director V G Idichandy, who is heading the committee, said on Monday. The present eligibility norm of an aggregate score of 60% in Class XII determined by the IIT standing council, as opposed to 85% recommended by a JEE review committee four years ago, is considered too low a benchmark.

"We are collecting data on Class XII results of the past four to five years from different boards in all states to base our recommendation on. Much will depend on how we compute an acceptable method to normalise the marks scored in different boards. You have nearly 40 boards of education in India," Professor Idichandy said.

However, the more difficult part will be to convince authorities of all the boards to declare Class XII results within a specified timeframe every academic year.

"This will be crucial for us as we have to base the JEE on the Class XII results. I personally think that this is where a common school board, at least at the level of higher secondary education, which has been proposed by the HRD minister Kapil Sibal, will be of help in determining any all-India merit list," he contended.

Idichandy acknowledged that the JEE cannot be abolished "but we want to give as much importance as possible, for the performance of students at the school level" in the IIT admissions.


NEWS source