An association of private schools has written a letter to Union Education Minister, expressing apprehension that the introduction of the Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET), also referred to as CUET, from the 2022-23 academic session may boost a "coaching culture" amongst students, news agency PTI reported.
UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar had, on March 21, said that central universities will have to use CUET scores to admit students to undergraduate programmes and not the Class XII marks. The syllabus of CUET will be mirrored with the Class XII model syllabus of the NCERT, Kumar had said.
Although the National Progressive Schools Conference (NPSC), an association of senior secondary school principals pan-India and abroad, welcomed the move to introduce CUCET and said it will "do away with the stress of appearing in multiple entrance tests" for students, it also flagged certain concerns, including the possibility that it might boost coaching culture. NPSC called for a "broad consultative process" with all stakeholders dealing with school education.
"While one of the objectives of introducing CUCET is to deal with high cut-off marks obtained by students of some state boards, this problem could have been addressed differently by designing a rationalisation structure to bring them in parity with CBSE," the letter written on March 24 said, as reported by PTI. It also said this batch of students is currently preparing for the Term II exams of the CBSE and the prospect of appearing for CUCET could be stressful for them.
"...we therefore feel that the CUCET could have been introduced next year so as to bring greater awareness amongst students who would have sufficient time to mentally prepare themselves to take such a common entrance examination after their final Board," read the letter.
NPSC chairperson Sudha Acharya said the fact that CUCET will be based on NCERT books will force students from state boards and ICSE to take coaching since they follow different books. "NEP 2020 envisages doing away with the culture of coaching. Unfortunately, not giving any weightage to Class XII will encourage proliferation of the coaching culture," she said in the letter. Citing the example of Delhi University, which is likely to keep passing marks in Class XII as an eligibility criterion for CUCET, she said in such a situation, schools will only become a medium for clearing CUCET.
"There will be no motivation or incentive for the students and teachers to put in their best efforts. The whole focus of NEP 2020 for school education has got diluted. In order to avoid this problem, it is essential that a minimum weightage of 50 per cent should be given to the Board examination," read the letter.
CUCET will have three parts: compulsory language, 27 subject domains and general test on quantitative reasoning, logical and analytical reasoning, numerical ability and general knowledge and current affairs. "Students who do not have the aptitude for Math or numerical or quantitative reasoning will find it difficult to score well in the third part without coaching. Moreover, students who would like to shift from one stream to another for college admission will have extreme difficulty in choosing subject domain in CUET," she said.
