The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Experts for reorienting Intermediate education

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 04, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Experts for reorienting Intermediate education

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, SEPT.3. The need to reform Intermediate education for preparing the students for the qualifying as well as EAMCET entrance examination without subjecting them to undue stress has been advocated by educationists.

But till such a time it is prudent to continue the EAMCET as fundamental changes could not be brought about overnight without a debate, and a consensus involving educationists, academicians and experts, they said speaking at a seminar organised by the State committee of Students Federation of India on `Proposal to abolish EAMCET' here on Friday.

Need for policy document

The former Chairman of State Council for Higher Education, C. Subbarao, said that in the present circumstances where inequalities persist regarding quality of intermediate education in different regions, there is no alternative to EAMCET. "It is like choosing the best out of a bad bargain." But it was time to focus on overcoming these inequalities. There had been suggestions such as offering M.Bi.P.C at Intermediate level as in Karnataka, separate entrance tests for medicine and engineering etc. If the Intermediate examination and EAMCET were of equal prominence, there would not be need for long term coaching, he opined.

A discussion on examination pattern, teaching methodology, academic standards should lead to bringing out a policy document for logical and appropriate changes. The US Government was also planning to bring out a policy statement on how to teach physics, maths, biological sciences and the draft was available on the net.

Revamp EAMCET

Veteran educationist Chukka Ramaiah said that both the Intermediate education and Eamcet were in dire straits and both needed to be reformed. The students were neither acquiring the content knowledge in the classroom nor any analytical, reasoning skills. The EAMCET that was supposed to test the skills of the student had merely become an information and memory based test. The corporate colleges only encouraged shortcut methods to qualify in EAMCET and as a result top rankers were failing in engineering, he regretted. To begin with EAMCET pattern should be reoriented to test basic concepts and skills to apply concepts and all the Universities be involved in setting the paper by rotation, he said. The auditing of EAMCET would help whether the test served the objectives, he added.

Inter board burdened

He opined that the Board of Intermediate Education be decentralised so that its burden of conducting examination for about 8 lakh students would come down and it could concentrate on important aspects of academic standards, curriculum and teaching methods.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh