Coimbatore, Nov. 20: Tamil Nadu has always been a forerunner in providing quality medical and engineering candidates to the nation. But the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) seems to have turned out to be an opportunity snatcher for the medical aspirant, while engineering is altogether a different story.
With Anitha’s death and the Supreme Court ruling that NEET will be the only gateway for admission to medicine, the State Government was left in a quandary to find a way out before the next untoward incident.
While the standard of NEET is being squarely blamed for students of the State Board faring poorly in it, it is also a reality that the qualifying test is even hard for the CBSC students to crack. But it is an open secret that the CBSC syllabus is far superior to that of the Samacheer pattern, which the Government is unwilling to concede.
But why the CBSC students are able to make up and clear the test is not just because their syllabus is superior to that of the State’s Samacheer pattern, but also because they get to study the syllabi of all the classes. It is common knowledge that the star performer schools, especially those in Namakkal and the surrounding Western region, do clamp down a strict study regimen to ensure 100 per cent results in Plus-Two and also in securing medical and engineering seats.
But all this has changed with NEET. Because these schools have always managed to perform by making their students go through rote learning of the X and XII syllabus, totally ignoring the IX and XI syllabi.
NEET, to a large extent contains questions from the IX and XI syllabi, and almost 90 per cent from the State could not make it to the qualifying mark. Even those who took up coaching could not bridge this yawning gap.
But with Anitha’s death the need for coaching and the inability to attend this at the centres run by private institutes by those with limited means was magnified.
Totally ignoring all the other perspectives, the State Government chose only to address the coaching issue and has now come up with a free coaching programme for competitive exams.
Admissions to the coaching centres were done through the Department of School Education portal www.tnschools.gov.in. The last date for admission was set at October 26.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami launched the project to provide free coaching for Plus-Two students for facing competitive examinations, including NEET, in Chennai on November 13. Termed as the first-of-its-kind initiative, the project will see setting up of 412 training centres across the State, one per Panchayat Union.
It is said that 73,000 have enrolled for training. As many as 100 centres have started functioning and the others too would in quick succession. Classes are being planned to be held on weekends. After school examinations the classes will be held every day.
While it was promised that experienced college teachers would be involved in conducting the coaching in the centres, the School Education Department, which will manage the programme, has now said that the responsibility for imparting training would be vested with Government school teachers.
This means that school teachers would be required to spend after-school hours and weekends handling classes. While there is much unrest among the teachers with respect to the long working hours, the serious concern however is the trepidation to handle CBSC based syllabi that NEET largely prescribes to. And the diffidence among the teachers themselves regarding their capacity to handle such a syllabus, which is not their regular cup of tea.
The Department has also promised to come out with a bank of 54,000 questions in Tamil and English, to be prepared by teachers.
Minister for School Education K.A. Sengottiyan had said in September that special resource persons would be brought in from Rajasthan, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh during the weekends to coach the students. Sessions through videoconferencing were also being planned.
The first training centre in Coimbatore was inaugurated on November 18 at the Government Higher Secondary School, Ganapathy, to cater to the students in the nearby areas. Classes on weekends will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free coaching, free study material, promise of renovated smart classrooms, etc., are the sops that are being offered to the students. But whether these are enough to equip them to clear NEET waits to be seen. Some academics are sceptical as it is too late to start coaching for next year’s entrance. The interesting thing in all this is getting under way with the State Government maintaining that the present Samacheer system was in no way inferior to other Boards.