HRD Ministry plans authority to conduct nationwide CET

The Human Resource Development Ministry is planning to set up a national authority to conduct common entrance test (CET) for admissions to engineering colleges across the country and will draft a bill to give it a statutory status.

Till the statutory body is established, a Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Studies (CAES) will be set up this year to provide support to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in conducting the nation-wide common entrance examination, proposed to be initiated from 2013, a top HRD Ministry official said.

The Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Studies, to be set up here at CBSE headquart­ers, will decide the type and pattern of the questions to be asked in the common entrance test.

“It will recommend the type and pattern of the questions for the common entrance keeping in view the cultural and social diversities of the country so that they are suitable for all students, whether they are from urban or rural background,” the ministry official said.

There is a plan to convert the CAES later into an independent national authority for conducting the common entrance test. “Seeking to give it a statutory status, we would draft a bill,” the official added.

The proposed common entrance test, which is set to be like scholastic aptitude test (SAT), carried out in the United States, will replace the IIT Joint Entrance Examination and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination.

The basic objective is to do away with the multiple entrance tests conducted for admissions to various engineering colleges across the country.

As per the proposal which has received in-principle approval of the HRD Ministry as well as Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology, the test scores will have 60 per cent weightage in deciding admissions; school board marks will have 40 per cent.

Step by step

* HRD Ministry plans to set up a national authority to conduct CET for entry into the country’s engineering colleges
* Will first set up Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Studies (CAES), which will be     converted into an independent national authority via a bill
* CAES will provide support to CBSE in conducting nation-wide CET
* Objective is to do away with multiple entrance tests