Taking into account the massive pressure students face to crack entrance exams for admission to medical and engineering colleges, the Supreme Court on Friday directed the government to frame guidelines to do away with the present system, asserting that “a single test cannot decide their future”.
According to a Times of India report, the apex court stated that 40 per cent weightage should be given to results of the Board exams and the rest 60 per cent for performance in the entrance exams while shortlisting candidates for admission to such courses.
“It is wrong that the entire future of a student is decided by his/her performance in the entrance examination. We cannot pass an order on the issue and it is for the government to regulate the system and frame the policy,” Times of India quoted the court’s directive as saying.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices A K Goel and U U Lalit also expressed concern over mushrooming of private coaching institutes for entrance tests and asked the Centre to introduce a mechanism to regulate them.
The court’s directive came in view of a PIL filed by CPM’s student wing SFI. In which it asked the Supreme Court to direct regulations of such institutes which “exploit” students and demand exorbitant fees.
The apex court agreed that commercialisation of education must be curbed. It, however, said that such institutes needed to be regulated, but it wasn’t possible to put a blanket ban on them.
The student wing contended that the Centre should frame a specific law to regulate the Rs 40,000-crore private coaching business. He said such institutes should be banned as the facilities were being availed only by rich students.
“Because of the hype created by the aggressive advertising by the coaching institutes, when a child realises that he can't make it to the medical or engineering course, the guilt of spending his/her father's hard-earned money on coaching classes leads him/her to commit suicide,” said the PIL.
While the court agreed that school education has got a secondary status with coaching institutes mushrooming across the country, it observed that “it needs to be regulated by the government”.
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