National Testing Agency to train paper setters

Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has announced that National Testing Agency (NTA) will train paper setters to set better question papers and provide better model answers. NTA was set up to relieve Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and other educational regulator bodies from burden of conducting multiple examinations.

Key Facts

NTA is expected to conduct some of the examinations that CBSE has been conducting till now.  It will take over all examinations from the CBSE (except the 10th and 12th board examinations) from 2019 in phased manner. It will be also conducting prestigious Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to engineering colleges like IITs and NITs and National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to all medical and dental colleges in the country (except AIIMS and JIPMER, Puducherry).

National Testing Agency (NTA)

NTA was approved by Union cabinet in November 2017 as an autonomous and self-sustained premier testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for higher educational institutions in India. It is registered as society under Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860. It mandates is to conduct entrance tests entrusted to it by any department or ministry and put in place a robust system for conducting of examinations.
It is also mandated to bring high reliability and standardised difficulty level for assessing aptitude, intelligence and problem-solving abilities of students. It will relieve CBSE, AICTE and other bodies of responsibility of conducting entrance examinations. It is chaired by eminent educationist appointed by Ministry of HRD. Its CEO will be Director General (DG) appointed by Government. Besides, it has Board of Governors comprising members from user institutions.

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2018