NEW DELHI: Filling the Central Universities Entrance Test (CUET) application form amid the board exam preparations has been inviting criticism from a set of school teachers and even Delhi University professors.
While some schools are holding orientation programmes for the students to fill the CUET forms, some are holding special sessions by inviting DU professors to facilitate class XII students in filling up forms.
According to the chairperson of the National Progressive Schools Conference, Sudha Acharya, the CUET application form is “cumbersome” and the students need hand-holding.
“Children need hand-holding to fill such complicated forms. We have also invited four professors from the Delhi University to hold sessions and facilitate students in filling the CUET exam form,” she said. Meanwhile, DU professors can be seen taking to social media questioning the UGC that how the children living in remote areas will be able to fill the form by themselves.
Amber Habib, Mathematics professor at Shiv Nadar University said, “When I started looking at the CUET registration form and the description of the score calculations, I realised that it will not solve the problems that it is supposed to solve. First, the conversion of scores to percentiles cannot distinguish between students who get the same marks, and so there will be a great number of students with the same scores.
When the base is a test with just 40 questions to be answered, calculating percentiles to seven digits is not going to have any benefits. Second, the normalisation between tests taken in different shifts is just a merging of the percentiles of the shifts. Well, if this is reasonable, then we could have simply shifted to using percentiles from the board exams, instead of this huge extra expense and confusion.”
Monami Basu, professor of Economics at the Kamla Nehru College, DU, posted on Facebook offering help to kids fill out the forms. She wrote, “I can accommodate a few more kids. If any kid from a marginalised background is asking for help, you can refer them to me. Meanwhile, I hope the government schools are helping. SFI Delhi you should definitely take this up. What will students in far-flung areas do? ”
Recently, the Tamil Nadu assembly had passed a resolution last week urging the central government to withdraw the proposal for CUET. Much like with the NEET ban bill, the state government led by CM M K Stalin has also been pushing against CUET for a few days.
Problem with score conversion
Amber Habib, Mathematics professor at Shiv Nadar University said, “When I started looking at the CUET registration form and the description of the score calculations, I realised that it will not solve the problems that it is supposed to solve. First, the conversion of scores to percentiles cannot distinguish between students who get the same marks, and so there will be a great number of students with the same scores. Second, the normalisation between tests taken in different shifts is just a merging of the percentiles of the shifts. Well, if this is reasonable, then we could have simply shifted to using percentiles from the board exams, instead of this huge extra expense and confusion.