Need more attempts, exam centres for JEE Main, NEET: Student group to Pokhriyal

NEW DELHI: The Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), in a letter to the education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, has recommended that students be allowed multiple attempts and more exam centres to write the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET 2021) exams. The JEE Main is a national-level admission test for engineering and NEET-UG is for undergraduate medicine.

The JEE Main 2021 was scheduled to be held in four rounds but the April and May sessions were postponed due to COVID-19. NEET-UG is still scheduled for August 1. No new dates have been announced for any of these postponed exams.

The students group also requested the education minister that the dates of exams such as the JEE Main, NEET, “be announced at the earliest” to reduce the anxiety of students.

SIO has also asked for the tests to be conducted in multiple shifts to “reduce the number of students at each center.” JEE Main is already conducted in multiple shifts.

JEE Main, NEET exam centres

“Apart from ensuring strict adherence to COVID-19 protocols in all exam centers. It is also necessary to vastly increase the number of examination centres all over the country. For examinations taken by [a] large number of students, the option of staggering the exam in different shifts (similar to JEE format) should also be considered,” said SIO in the letter.

The group has also proposed that a fixed time frame of all exams in the coming months should be notified so that the students are not in a perpetual state of anxiety about their exam schedule.

It has also recommended that the students be allowed multiple attempts and that the best of their attempts should be considered for admission. NEET, a pen-and-paper exam, is held just once in a year. The education ministry had considered multiple attempts for NEET 2021 but ultimately decided against it. The group has said that this method will be an “added measure” in reducing stress considering “the 'make-or-break' nature of these examinations”.

"In view of the seriousness of the situation, unprecedented measures must be considered to ensure that the important task of education and assessment can be carried out without posing a serious risk to the mental and physical well being of a whole generation of students in their formative years," said SIO national president Mohammad Salman Ahmad.

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