According to the orders issued by Kuruvilla John, Principal Secretary, the Law Department has been asked to draft the legislation on the basis of the recommendations of the Entrance Reforms Committee constituted by the Government long ago. The Government plans to introduce the reforms in the entrance examination from the academic year 2010-2011.
The question of reforming the existing Entrance Examination System has been under the active consideration of the LDF Government and it had re-constituted the committee with eminent educationists for suggesting reforms to the present Entrance Examination System. A series of meetings were held to discuss the reforms suggested by the committee during April 2008.
The Government examined the report in detail and later accepted the recommendation of the Entrance Examinations Reform Committee in principle. The Government also approved the actions so far taken on the recommendations of the committee and decided to pilot a Bill in the coming Assembly session.
As the latest action taken on the report, the Government has published the report of the Entrance Reforms Committee on the official website of the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations and has invited suggestions from the public.
The major recommendations of the Entrance Reforms Committee were as follows:
1) Multiple Choice Question Type System is not adequate to make comprehensive evaluation of student's knowledge for professional course admission. Due weightage should be given to the performance in the qualifying examination. The weightage recommended was 50%. For the first two or three years internal evaluations scores and practical examination marks should not be counted.
2) Higher Secondary Examination system and Vocational Higher Secondary examination system should be reformed in such a manner that it will give no room for its integrity and transparency being challenged. To this end several measures were suggested.
3) For comparing the marks of applications of students who had followed other systems of study, namely, CBSE, ICSE, Other Boards etc., the marks obtained were to be called for from the respective Boards.
4) The marks in the qualifying examination and Entrance Examination have to be combined. For this purpose the total marks of the candidate in the Entrance Examination should be brought to a scale of 0 to 100 and added to the total of the normalized marks of the three subjects Physics, Chemistry Mathematics/Biology in the qualifying examination after scaling and converting it to a 0 to 100 scale.
5) There should be a question bank containing several thousands of objective type-questions with graded difficulty levels from which the software can generate random question papers with desired mix of difficulty gradation. The question bank development process will be undertaken by a large pool of resource persons. There will be Malayalam translation of the questions. A question bank division with several technically qualified persons has been suggested to be created at the Commissionerate of Entrance Examinations.
6) The committee suggested to establish a scholarship fund with the revenue earned through the conduct of Entrance Examinations and contributions from alumini of professional colleges and from industry in and outside Kerala and non-resident Indians. The fund is to be administered by an Autonomous Quasi Government Trust with representatives from industry, eminent educationists and representatives from Government.
7) The committee suggested to take a decision on the adding of marks obtained in the qualifying examination with the marks obtained in the entrance examination in consultation with legal experts.