If the recommendations of the high level committee constituted under the leadership of former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan to reform the National Testing Agency (NTA) are accepted, then major changes will be seen in the upcoming exams. Most importantly, the countless opportunities given to students in the NEET-UG exam may now end. On the lines of JEE Main, they can now be given a maximum of four chances for this exam. It is believed that this will reduce the number of students in the NEET-UG exam.

Currently, due to no such restriction in this exam, students appear in it on an average seven to eight times. Currently, this exam is held only once a year, whereas JEE Main exam is held twice a year. In this, students get six chances in three years to appear in this exam. In 2024, about 24 lakh students participated in NEET-UG. The high-level committee constituted to reform the NTA has given its recommendations to the Supreme Court last week. However, NTA has not made these recommendations public yet.

Outsourcing may come to an end

According to sources, other important recommendations made by the committee include the complete elimination of outsourcing from examinations. Along with this, it has also recommended to develop Kendriya Vidyalaya and Navodaya Vidyalaya as permanent examination centers for conducting examinations across the country. At present, there is one Navodaya Vidyalaya in every district, while in many districts there are both Navodaya Vidyalaya and Kendriya Vidyalaya. Apart from this, it has been suggested to connect other government institutions with it.

Till now, NTA used to make any institute or private school an examination centre on the advice of private companies conducting the examination. The copying mafia is also involved in this game. Along with this, the committee has also suggested the deployment of regular officers and employees in NTA for conducting the examination. Because now the officers and employees who come on deputation for a few years used to do some wrongdoing and leave, it becomes difficult to fix their responsibility later. The special thing is that Dainik Jagran had also run a series named 'NTA in the dock' regarding these shortcomings related to NTA.

Several important recommendations of the committee

According to sources, another important recommendation made by the committee is to conduct all the examinations in hybrid mode. In which the examination will be conducted in both online and offline mode. That is, the examination paper will be available online, while the answers to the questions will have to be filled with a pen on the OMR sheet. The committee's reasoning behind this was that this would eliminate the possibility of the question paper being leaked through the computer or from the centre.

Along with this, the committee has recommended to conduct bigger exams in multiple shifts like JEE Main. It has also proposed to conduct NEET-UG exam in multiple shifts. If sources are to be believed, the committee will give another report on technical aspects in the coming days. However, the government has to decide when to implement it.

This committee was formed after the NEET-UG controversy

This committee to reform the NTA was constituted on 22 June 2024 on the instructions of the Supreme Court after the controversy arose over the irregularities in NEET-UG. Other big names included in this seven-member committee headed by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan include former AIIMS Delhi director Randeep Guleria, educationist BJ Rao, K Ramamurthy, Pankaj Bansal, Aditya Mittal along with Govind Jaiswal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education as members. The committee was to give its recommendations regarding improvement in the examination process, improvement in data security protocol and structure and functioning of NTA etc.