What do you think would be the pattern of Common Aptitude Test in Engineering as Proposed by Mr. Kapil Sibal?

Heard some rumors like it will be on the pattern of SAT (Just Like US), so do you think that Indian Students would be tested on Vocabulary also or just the mathematical ability part. How would you see the current IIT JEE coaching Industry transforming for the upcoming pattern of examination?

Do you think that the pattern change is a good move?

********I had posted this discussion on linkedin Educational professionals in India group*******

Response 1:

I think pattern change would be a good move to be at Par with Industry and global standards. The current rote learning also needs to be checkd for mushrooming coaching Industry. With mushrooming Engineerging colleges across India it would be idle to have a common entrance test for IIT, NIT and other govt and pvt colleges.

My Reply:

While the change of pattern might be a good idea, I personally as a teacher of physics do not think that the current pattern involves rote learning. It is all about understanding. The reason students go to coaching institutes is because most of the times their school teachers are not capable of giving them an in depth understanding which they find at the coaching institutes.

Otherwise, if you see, 95% of the syllabus of IIT JEE is same as that of CBSE or other state boards. Then why do the students feel the need for additional coaching?

Why should government want to check the "mushrooming" coaching industry, instead, shouldn't they be more concerned about providing quality education in schools? Is there anything inherently wrong with the idea of coaching? I think it is just another form of teaching, and probably what is being done is "Give the dog a bad name and then kick him".

And even if they change the pattern to SAT type, won't that just change the coaching pattern instead of eliminating it? Already there are many players who are coaching people for SAT. (Kaplan, Princeton Review... Jamboree...)

One must also understand that to date all the IITians have been selected based on their performance in a test based on PCM and it has worked. The Top US universities are full of ex IITians. The top Software companies in the US are being practically run by the IITians who were selected through the same type of test.

Response 2:

Some leading brands in IITJEE coaching have been irresponsible towards students. They have ended up killing the confidence and careers of tens of thousands of students. Thats why most principals and teachers are against coaching.
A proof of their irresponsible behavior is that some of them have still not incorporated support for "school XI /XII" along with IITJEE coaching. They are still telling students that school performance does not impact IITJEE results.
I think government intervention is necessary to stop such misinformation campaign being undertaken by some IITJEE coaching brands.

My Reply:

I personally do not discourage students from paying attention to their school studies. While in general there is a correlation between School performance and IIT JEE , it has happened a few times in past that a board topper has not been able to qualify IIT JEE while a student getting 60% marks in Boards is able to do so.
Why should they (coaching institutes) incoroporate the support for Class XI/XII? (By the way 90% of syllabus is anyway covered) Are they obligated to? What is so unethical about it? Are they getting the students at gun points? Of course if there is misinformation, the government intervention is necessary. But the bottomline is that the baby must not be thrown along with the bath water! :-)