JOIN USPoor performance of govt school students in Tamil Nadu brings focus on NEET
Tamil Nadu’s overall pass percentage in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) coming down for the second consecutive year and the “poor performance” of students from government schools have brought the focus yet again on the entrance exam to get admissions into medical and dental colleges.
The pass percentage of Tamil Nadu, which is opposed to the conduct of the NEET and has passed a Bill against the exam in the Assembly, stood at 51.20 per cent this year as against 54.40 per cent in 2021. This year’s pass percentage is 5 per cent lower than the national average of 56.30 per cent. As many as 1,42,894 students applied for the exam while 1,32,167 appeared and 67,787 passed.
What has caught the attention of many, especially the proponents of NEET, is the performance of government school students in the entrance exam. Data released by the School Education Department said of the 17,972 government school students who applied for the exam, only 12,840 attended. Out of these, only 4,447 (35 per cent) cleared the exam.
Though the number of government school students appearing for NEET has increased over 2021, the pass percentage has come down. Only 8,061 students from government schools applied for NEET in 2021, out of which 1,957 cleared the exam.
Opposition parties have blamed the government for not training students from the schools owned by it to appear and clear NEET. They also said the number of students from government schools getting into medical colleges would have been abysmally low if there was no 7.5 per cent internal reservation for them and asked the DMK dispensation to concentrate on this aspect even while fighting for an exemption from the exam for TN.
Though Tamil Nadu has been opposing NEET since its inception, the School Education Department has made free training for the exam accessible to students from government schools as it felt they are in a “disadvantageous position.”
Educationist Jayaprakash Gandhi attributed “huge learning gap” in the past two years owing to the Covid-19-induced lockdowns and online classes as the reason for the performance of the government school students. He told DH that the number of students appearing for the exam increasing every year could also be the reason for the pass percentage coming down.
“These students didn’t write their SSLC exams in 2020 as they were promoted to 11th standard without writing exams. And they didn’t learn the 11th standard syllabus in schools, they learnt only through online. How many schools or students had the infrastructure for conducting/attending classes when compared to those from private schools?” he asked.
Since the NEET question paper comprises questions from plus-one and plus-two syllabus, Gandhi said, students who missed learning due to Covid lockdown have suffered. “I believe this would be the case among government school students across the country,” he said.
Prince Gajendrababu, General Secretary, State Platform for Common School System, termed NEET as a “psychological atrocity” against students and accused the National Testing Agency of being “non-transparent” on many counts.
“We have been maintaining that NEET discriminates against students from government schools and poorer sections of the society as they don’t have resources like those in private schools. The problem here isn’t learning but non-availability of equitable access. NEET views unequals as equals. That is the problem,” Babu told DH.