To say Tamil Nadu’s relationship with the NEET has been contentious would be an understatement. This is the second year students in the state have taken the national screening exam for medical and dental courses. The key argument against the NEET is that it may favour urban students with access to CBSE education over those from rural backgrounds who study the state board syllabus. Leaving aside the relative merits of that argument, the fact remains that over one lakh students from the state took the exam in 2018. However, the NEET and CBSE failed to ease the conditions under which students took the test. At least 1,500 students were forced to travel out of state to take the exam, causing stress and additional expenses to the families.
Meanwhile, the CBSE enforced its rules as strictly as ever to the point that some students in Kerala alleged that they were forced to remove their bras to take the exam. Given the inflexibility exhibited by the body and strict compliance expected by it one would think those responsible for conducting the test would bring some high standards to play in administering the test.
Leaving aside exam day goof-ups like providing the question paper in the wrong language and then forcing the students to wait for hours to take the test with the right question papers, one would assume that the content in the question papers would have been vetted to the highest standards. Yet, it has been found that the Tamil question paper, attempted by over 24,000 students in the state, was riddled with translation errors. One group found 49 mistakes of translation in 180 questions, reportedly affecting up to 190 marks in a 720-mark paper.
These mistakes changed the meanings of questions and even if the students had deciphered them based on context clues, it would have slowed them down during the test. Yet when the matter was taken up with the CBSE, it refused to comment or even consider grace marks for the affected students. It appears the CBSE has high standards only when it comes to what it expects of students and parents.