The most probable thought process would force us expect the students with top most rank in the West Bengal Board Higher Secondary Exam to also make their mark in the WBJEE or other state joint entrance examinations. But somewhere down the line, students from Bankura, Jalpaiguri, CoochBehar and other districts who aced their Board exams were not seen to be much prevalent in the merit list of the national and state level competitive. In fact, students from other boards who came to give WBJEE 2016 was the dominant force in the top 10000 rank holders. Those who have special aptitude in mathematics, but opt for the ISI entrance instead of engineering, are mostly from major Kolkata-based HS schools, like Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission and South Point High School.
A glance at the WBJEE merit list shows the dominance of four urban centres -Kolkata, North 24-Parganas, Howrah and Burdwan. They account for 7,778 of the first 10,000 engineering slots. Most of these students are from schools affiliated to other boards, elbowing out good students from the other districts. This has been a source of constant worry for both teachers and experts who feel that immediate change needs to be executed to keep up with the other boards. According to a Hindu School Mathematics teacher, situations haven’t changed because changing the question pattern without making changes in the teaching methodology is ineffective . The MCQ pattern however, demands more information. The entrance examinations require competence in several techniques that enable students to solve questions fast which needs to be incorporated in HS schools.
When asked about this recent trend in competitive, a few of the JU faculties and professors came forward to suggest what can be done. All of them support a change in question pattern instead of changing the teaching methodology. They think that knowledge of basic science should not be compromised and pinpoints at the ISI entrance result which showed that it is important to understand the concepts and apply them rather than just focusing on problem solving skill. ISI dean of studies, Pradipto Bandhopadhyay however cites the difference between all the tests by saying that a few entrances like JEE, have speed as a major criterion, but for ISI entrance, no such time constraint plays a part.
The WBJEE Board has enough money according to Mitra, and can easily begin this procedure with the help of the academia and sending its feedback to the HS Council for their consideration Secondly, the government should set a cut off for engineering entrance to ensure quality.
Source: http://goo.gl/lqmwWx
