Haunted By Paper Leaks, Can NTA Exorcise The Ghost Of Entrance Tests In 2025? – News18

Last Updated:December 22, 2024, 08:00 IST

All eyes are on how well the National Testing Agency, which conducts 15 major entrance and fellowship exams in which over one crore students participate every year, is prepared and performs in its task of conducting error-free and leak-proof examinations

Soon after results of NEET-UG 2024 were announced in June, a massive nationwide outrage erupted with allegations of irregularities, paper leaks and inflated marks surfacing from different parts of the country. (PTI)

The year 2024, for India, was not just shaped by politics, art, and entertainment, but a crucial turning point in the education setup that not only impacted lakhs of students and put their future at stake but also unearthed a nexus that gave sleepless nights to testing agencies as well as the Union government.

With 2025 around the corner, there is still a question mark over the integrity, credibility, and security of high-stakes competitive exams such as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG), even as the government says it is committed to providing a “fair” and “loophole-free” exam system.

As another cycle of entry-level exams to the country’s top engineering and medical colleges is all set to begin, all eyes are on how well the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts 15 major entrance and fellowship exams — in which over one crore students participate every year — is prepared and performs in its task of conducting error-free and leak-proof examinations. These exams include NEET-UG, UGC-NET, JEE-Mains and CUET-UG, among others.

The new year will begin with young students having passed Class 12 sitting for Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE)-Mains. The first session of the entrance exam will be held from January 22-31, 2025, and the second session will be held from April 1-8, 2025. JEE-Mains is conducted to shortlist candidates eligible for JEE-Advanced, based on scores of which entry to the country’s premier engineering colleges — the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — is done. Following this, NEET-UG, which is so far the single entry-level exam for admission to government as well as private medical colleges, will be conducted in May. It has been conducted in pen-and-paper mode and is one of the largest exams conducted by the NTA.

Set up in 2017 by the NDA government, NTA was established under the education ministry as an independent, autonomous body responsible for administering standardised entrance exams for educational institutions.

Soon after results of NEET-UG 2024 were announced in June, a massive nationwide outrage erupted with allegations of irregularities, paper leaks and inflated marks surfacing from different parts of the country. There were also reports of involvement of the exam centre personnel leaking the question paper from Gujarat’s Godhra and Jharkhand. The matter was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has so far filed five charge sheets in the NEET (UG) paper theft case against a total of 45 accused.

The allegations reached the courts and finally, the Supreme Court where a bench heard all the petitions filed in the matter — both in favour of a re-test as well as those against it. The apex court announced its verdict on August 2, ruling out a re-test and asking NTA to completely restructure the exam process.

After the NEET-UG controversy, the UGC-NET exam was cancelled following reports of paper leak on the darknet. Later, the UGC-CSIR NET exam was also postponed due to intelligence inputs of some possible malpractice in its conduct. This year, 23.3 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG, while nine lakh students sat for UGC-NET and around two lakh were set to take the CSIR-NET.

A seven-member panel, constituted by the Union ministry of education (MoE) in July to recommend reforms for an error-free entrance exam system as well as strengthening the NTA, has suggested several key measures, including Computer-Based Test (CBT) format for all entrance exams and hybrid model for places where complete online exams cannot be conducted; question papers to be transmitted digitally in case of hybrid model (until now question papers for pen-and-paper mode were kept in banks and then transported to test centres); holding multi-stage exam for NEET-UG, akin to JEE; reducing the number of subject choices in CUET-UG; hiring permanent personnel in NTA instead of temporary staff; and limiting the number of outsourced/private centres by establishing new CBT centres in government-run institutions. The panel was headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Radhakrishnan.

Ministry Clears The Air

According to ministry officials, the implementation of the panel’s recommendations is in process. “The measures are being implemented step by step. Some of these are systemic changes and will need some time to be brought into effect,” said a senior official familiar with the matter.

In a written response submitted by the education ministry in Parliament this November, it said a high-powered steering committee has been set up to monitor the implementation of the recommendations made by the Radhakrishnan committee.

“The committee recommendations include strengthening of NTA, developing of institutional linkage with states and district authorities for providing secure test administration apparatus, and involvement of Test Indenting Agencies as Knowledge and Examinations partner, among others,” the response stated.

The committee, it further said, has also laid out measures and recommended Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to prevent breaches in both Pen and Paper Test (PPT) and Computer Based Test (CBT) examinations.

“Guidelines for Question Paper Setting and Vetting as per defined protocols have also been recommended. Further, besides other recommendations, the panel has called for a detailed framework to be developed on Testing Centre Allocation Policy to prevent any unusual pattern of test centre allocation to students,” the ministry said.

As a deterrence to unfair means in public examinations, the Centre has also enacted the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, which came into force from June 21 this year.

NTA Gears Up To Plug Loopholes

Multiple central probing agencies tasked with finding the loopholes at the test centres told NTA that many of the exam centres were “compromised” and exam personnel at the centres were at the helm of malpractices. They also advised the testing agency to expand its pool of observers, both central and from the states.

Following the inputs, a public notification issued on the NTA website dated November 27 said the agency is looking for government officers — serving or retired — to become observers.

“We are collecting a pool of serving and retired government officers as well as other categories of officers for conducting examinations for the National Testing Agency transparently and smoothly,” the notification stated.

It further said observers have a dual role in the NTA test administration process. On one side, they assist site supervisors, invigilators, and other officials in conducting fair and smooth examinations, while on the other, they certify that the examination practices have been followed as per NTA guidelines.

Observers are NTA representatives entrusted with the responsibility to monitor all aspects of the conduct of examination and ensure that the examinations are conducted in a punctual, fair, and transparent manner at the examination centre.

They need to participate in the briefing convened by the centre head for invigilators, security persons/volunteers and all staff concerned about the important instructions, dos, and don’ts of the conduct of the examination, candidates’ entry and frisking plan (both for male and female).

Besides observing server connectivity and settings in control/server room, observers need to observe/certify that server activation and question paper downloading is done as per confidentiality norms.

The NTA is also in talks with IITs, NITs and other such institutions where test centres can be set up since these are better equipped with internet connectivity.

Major Changes In CUET-UG 2025

CUET-UG is the second-largest entrance exam in the country after NEET-UG in which around 15 lakh students participated last year.

Major changes were announced for the upcoming CUET-UG 2025 mid-December. As suggested by the Radhakrishnan committee, the choice of subjects has been reduced to 37 from 63. This is because 20 language subjects have been discontinued while admissions to the dropped subjects can be done based on General Aptitude Test (GAT) scores. Also, earlier there were 29 domain-specific subjects, which will be down to 23 from next year.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to discontinue six papers — entrepreneurship, teaching aptitude, fashion studies, tourism, legal studies, and engineering graphics. For these subjects, admission can be taken based on the GAT score.

Apart from this, from next year, there will be a uniform exam duration of 60 minutes, which until now varied from 45-60 minutes for different subjects.

Another change that has been introduced in the format from next year is that all 50 questions will be compulsory in CUET as opposed to last year when students could choose to answer 40 questions. All papers will carry 250 marks in total and there will be negative markings for every incorrect answer.

The exam that was introduced in 2022 for admission to undergraduate (UG) courses in all central universities was held in the hybrid mode for the first time in 2024. This was a shift from the previous year when it was held in CBT format. The shift was made since last year, the exam schedule was stretched by over a month, delaying the admission cycle due to shortage of CBT centres in most places. Also, in 2023, there were several UTs and states like Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, and those in the Northeast, where finding enough test centres was a hassle.

Now that CUET-UG is being shifted to the CBT mode from 2025 again, all eyes will be on how logistics are arranged.

“The CBT format for entrance exams is most secure. The issue of logistics will occur only if the planning for preparing these resources is not done in advance. With advance and robust planning and deputing of resources, the exam can be conducted glitch-free,” said a senior ministry official who didn’t wish to be named.