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New Delhi, April 11: The faculty federation of the IITs and the Union human resource development ministry have failed to iron out differences over the proposed changes to IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination) from next year.
HRD minister Kapil Sibal heard out the faculty representatives who felt that the proposed single engineering entrance examination that seeks to give at least 40 per cent weightage to Class XII marks would fail to select students having the required knowledge.
With the faculty federation not agreeing to the manner in which the single entrance has been planned, Sibal asked them to discuss the issue at the level of the senate of each IIT. Such a process may take up to two months.
Each senate, made up of the director and senior faculty members in an IIT, will give its feedback, which will be considered by the ministry before finalising the changes to the IIT-JEE.
Many members of the senates of IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi have differed with the proposed single entrance test. Now the senates of all IITs will take a fresh look at the JEE reforms, a source said.
A few members from the faculty federation also alleged that they had not been consulted at all on the proposed changes. Some said the changes would ruin the IIT-JEE.
The ministry plans to reform the IIT-JEE by introducing two-layer objective-type tests and giving weightage to Class XII marks of the aspirants. Every candidate will be accorded an all-India score based on the Class XII performance. The 40 per cent weightage would be given to each candidate on the basis of the all-India score.
The ministry had set up a committee under the secretary to the department of science and technology, T. Ramasamy, who suggested a statistical formula to work out an all-India score for every student. The formula will seek to reflect the school board performance of a student on a national scale.
The federation is of the view that this formula for evaluating the school board performance on a national scale is flawed. In view of different assessment and evaluation procedures adopted by the school boards, the federation feels meritorious students would be disadvantaged.
The proposed test is meant for selection of students in the centrally funded engineering institutes, including the 15 IITs, 30 NITs and the four IIITs.
The single entrance will replace the IIT-JEE and AIEEE (the All India Engineering Entrance Examination). The test will have two parts — the main test and an advance test. Candidates will have to answer objective-type questions in both the tests, to be conducted the same day by the CBSE with assistance from the IITs.
The faculty federation has also objected to the proposal to make the test objective-type. The advance test should have questions that require detailed answers, the federation said.
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