'Harder' NEET in regional languages? CBSE to clarify

Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday he had sought an explanation from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) over complaints that the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) was harder in some regional languages.

Presiding over the Southern Regional Workshop on Innovations and Best Practices in School Education here, he said the board would clarify shortly whether NEET in regional languages was harder than in Hindi and English.

To a question, the minister described as “unfortunate” the Kerala incident where an 18-year-old girl was asked to remove her top inner wear before being allowed into the exam centre.

“We had to follow a strict dress code as malpractices have taken place earlier. Just one girl has a concern about the dress code out of 11 lakh students who took the exam. Four teachers have been suspended following the incident,” he said.

NEET was conducted on May 7 in Hindi, English and eight regional languages for admission to undergraduate medical and dental courses across the country. Javadekar said people could report any errors in NCERT textbooks or suggest modifications.

National Teacher Platform

The minister launched a strategy document to build a National Teacher Platform (NTP).
“Our government’s first priority is to improve the quality of teachers. Unless we improve the quality of teachers, we will not be able to create capable people to lead our country,” he said at the launch of a vision document on the NTP.

He continued: “As a part of the Digital India Programme, we must leverage technology in education to continously improve learning outcomes.

I believe a platform like the NTP can help our teachers achieve their true potential.” The NTP is a state-of-the-art platform that aims to provide teachers high-quality content and an environment for collaboration and mentoring. The minister proposed to build an NTP that will enable, accelerate and amplify solutions in the field of teacher education.

Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, said: “We will build the NTP in a way that each state can adapt to build contextualised solutions relevant to its needs.”