Dont Hazard Any Guesses, NTSE Now Has Negative Marking Guessing answers will prove costly to class 10 students who will attempt the final National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) that will be held on May 11 this year. For each wrong answer, students will lose 1/3 marks as for the first time the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has introduced negative marking in all three papers of the NTSE. The academic body hopes that this would make students more serious and it can make a better assessment of talent. “Negative marking will reduce the chance-factor to a great extent and discourage students from blindly choosing answers for multiple choice questions,” said Yagnamurthy Sreekanth, professor and in-charge of the National Talent Search Scheme Cell at NCERT. Prof Sreekanth observed that the extent to which students apply the guessing technique varies with each subject. “In mathematics, students solve the problem and get answers and there is no role for the distractors (wrong answer choices). But in science and social science, the guessing becomes higher as choices are meant to confuse students,” he explained. The NTSE is held in two stages — state-level and a final national-level exam. The NTSE tests class 10 students through the scholastic aptitude test, mental ability test and a language component test (English) that was introduced last year. Only thousand students are selected through the final exam and are awarded a monthly scholarship of `500. The exam itself is very competitive as only 235 students from Karnataka, out of 54,152 who attempted it in November last year, have been selected for the final exam. Dhanya Bharath from Sri Vidya Mandir, Malleswaram came first in the state with 111 marks out of 140 (SAT and MAT). “It doesn’t scare me. In fact, it is good as it won’t give any room for flukes. We will have to attempt only if we know the answers. It will help us as we have to attempt future entrance exams such as the Joint Entrance Exam for Indian Institutes of Technology that also have negative marking,” Dhanya said. Aditya M Niranjan, a student of Mysore West Lions Sevaniketan School, came third with 109 marks. “Negative marking may slightly reduce our scores. We could guess answers to questions we’d have kept for the end. We cannot make educated guesses any more.” Along with negative marking, NCERT wants to introduce other measures to ensure only deserving students bag the scholarships. “We followed a very raw manner of selection. Now we are closer to estimating their true abilities. We are also looking at talent in Physical Education, Arts and Aesthetics,” Prof Sreekanth said and added that the Ministry for Human Resource Development was reviewing the number and amount of scholarships for NTSE. BASE, a leading NTSE coaching centre, welcomed the move. “Given that only 235 have qualified from the state, it is important to test whether they have understood the concepts,” said Chitkala B C, head of the BASE School programme. B S Sudhindra, former director, Indira Gandhi National Open University, said it would help students in the long run as they will be able to solve far more difficult problems. “This should be introduced in all qualifying exams in the country.”
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 05:57:33 +0000
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