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A testing time for all

The fact that students are under great stress helps touts who scout for those willing to shell out a big sum to get ahead of the others in an examination. G. Ananthakrishnan writes.

ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS have, over the last decade, grown into a multi-crore market that encompasses tutorial companies, a growing list of guidebooks and teachers who specialise in "successful" tuitions. A family must make a provision for a couple of lakhs for a child entering high school on this single account.

The number of examinations that a student has to take has itself multiplied over the years, in particular from the mid-1980s. Private institutions that have been mushrooming during the last decade have started holding their own entrance examinations, in some cases simply to rake in a tidy sum each year.

Educationists have expressed the concern that the mounting pressure on students has created fertile ground for malpractice. The students are under great stress to prepare for examinations and travelling to various centres to take them. This factor helps touts who scout for students willing to shell out a big sum to get ahead of the others in an examination. The IIT and the IIM examinations together involve about three lakh students, but the technology institutions have put in a filter at the preliminary stage in the form of an objective-type test that limits the number of those who go on to the final. The pressure to get at the question papers is intense. The Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination (TNPCEE), which is the gateway to the better institutions in the State, is a classic example.

A former Vice-chancellor of the Anna University, which conducts the TNPCEE, points out that just over a decade ago, question banks were put together based on three questions each from 20 faculty members. Among these, only six questions were finally chosen. The question banks, however, became prized and were pilfered by some tutorial colleges.

The integrity of the entrance examination process is then under threat at the most vulnerable link in the chain, the printing press. In the case of the IIM examination, the needle of suspicion points at the printing press. Where presses are involved, often a lower level employee is found responsible for spiriting out the vital questions rather than the person who has signed up for the contract. For the TNPCEE, the security issue became so important that the faculty took turns to keep vigil at the printing press and the Chief Secretary and the Director-General of Police came into the picture, sanctioning armed police guard to move the question papers to different centres.

The way forward for entrance examinations is to introduce fundamental reform: reduce the number of entrance examinations being administered in the country for the many types of courses — engineering, medicine, management or law. That would lead to a secure process, using the latest technology such as screening tests administered at designated centres online. Moreover, the advances in digital technology mean less pressure on administrators.

A bureaucrat in the Tamil Nadu cadre, who is an IIM Bangalore graduate, says it is possible today to encrypt question papers and decrypt them at the last minute, making it more difficult for touts to operate. The digital "key" to the question paper could be released only on the morning of the examination and the papers printed in a decentralised mode. The questions could even be encrypted and put on CDs for transporting to the remote centres and kept under security, making them less vulnerable. The printing press is a soft target for touts because they are often chosen on financial considerations and universities go in for tenders. Many established universities avoid tenders to award contracts to print question papers and prefer to answer audit objections.

What worries education administrators more is that entrance examinations have overshadowed the qualifying examination such as the Higher Secondary certificates for admission to most professional courses. This loss of credibility must serve as a warning to the educational system, says M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman, Madras Institute of Development Studies and former Vice-Chairman of the State Council for Higher Education.

In the confusion surrounding the various types of entrance examinations, the student does not know what level of understanding in a particular subject is expected of him. This affects the way he prepares for tests and the temptation for shortcuts grows stronger.

Security risks are a cause for concern to international agencies as well. The Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the scores of which determine admission to universities internationally, recently said it was suspending its plan to distribute the essay response papers of the analytical writing test, in view of "possible test security risks."

The distribution would be reconsidered after the security issues were better understood and solutions developed, the GRE Board said.

Last year, the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) cancelled the graduate-level computer science test for students in India, China and Hong Kong, because some Asian websites posted answers to earlier papers. Universities were asked to judge applications from candidates of these countries based on other material submitted. The general test would go on unaffected in India, the ETS said.

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