Much to the dismay of nearly two lakh students, the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has decided to postpone the announcement of the Common Entrance Test (CET) results on account of delay in the release of Class 12 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Indian School Certificate (ISC) exam results across the country.
Sources in the KEA said CET rankings, which were scheduled to be announced on Saturday, would now be released only after the CBSE and the ISC exam results are out. Around 1.8 lakh candidates have written the test for admissions to engineering, agriculture, and AYUSH courses.
“Every year, we announce the ranks without waiting for the CBSE and ISC results. But this year, as admissions to medical courses are based on the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), we decided to wait for the CBSE and the ISC results. We will need less than a day to compute our CET results once the Class 12 marks are announced,” said a KEA official.
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As per the calendar of events, NEET results are scheduled to be announced on June 8. Queries made with officials in the CBSE as well as the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations on the date of the results did not yield any response. B. Gayatri Devi, secretary, Karnataka State ICSE Schools Association, said children are understandably anxious as their scores are linked to college admissions.
This year, the CBSE and the ISC exams were postponed because of Legislative Assembly elections in five States. With the Delhi High Court refusing to allow the CBSE to withdraw its moderation policy for the exams held this year, there has been a further delay in announcing the results.
Parents, students and teachers seem to be divided on the issue of grace marks and “moderation of marks”. While some are against this practice as they feel that spiking of marks will affect “meritorious” students, others said there is a need for moderation as the level of difficulty varies for different sets of question papers.
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Manilal Carvalho, principal, Delhi Public School Bangalore East, said, “There are different sets of question papers and the difficulty level of each paper is not the same. In such circumstances, the boards should allow moderation so that the child’s marks are an accurate indicator of his/her knowledge.”