The State government has decided not to re-conduct the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (CET) and also to not consider for assessment the 50 out-of-syllabus questions in four papers.
This essentially means over 20% of the questions in the four subjects — Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Biology — put together will not be considered for assessment.
The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) received 4,000 objections from students over several out-of-syllabus questions in CET-2024. “Considering the burden on students to prepare again for the exams and the stress on them, it has been decided to not conduct the re-exam,” the Department of Higher Education said in a statement on Sunday.
In his statement, Srikar M.S., Principal Secretary, Department of Higher Education, said: “Keeping in view the expert committee report and opinion of many stakeholders and the paramount interest of protecting the legitimate interests of students, the KEA is directed to remove the questions that are out of the 2023-24 syllabus from the assessment and assess only the remaining questions”.
“Based on the expert committee report and analysis of the I PUC syllabus of 2022-23, the number of out-of-syllabus questions from deleted chapters of 2023-24 rationalised syllabus are as follows: Biology - 11, Physics - nine, Mathematics - 15, and Chemistry - 15. The KEA will also publish the answer key along with the list of out-of-syllabus questions on their website,” the statement said.
Students will be assessed on the remaining questions only. “This will adequately protect the interests of the students and provide a level-playing field. Two questions with incorrect solutions will also be awarded grace marks,” the statement said.
“There are a number of exams that are being conducted in May and June, including COMEDK, JEE (Advanced), NEET, NEST, CUET and the second and third annual exams of II PUC. The government is of the view that conducting a re-exam at this stage will cause undue hardship and burden to the students. Since there are several other exams that the students have to write, re-conducting the CET will cause unnecessary panic and harassment. Further, it would be causing undue hardship for the students for no fault of theirs. The academic calendar for professional courses will also get delayed if a re-examination is proposed,” the release explained the rationale for not conducting a re-exam.
However, to avoid such instances in future, the KEA has been directed to prepare a detailed standard operating procedure for setting question papers for the CET.
Though the number of out-of-syllabus questions according to students and teachers were more, the expert committee constituted for the subjects opined that some questions are in the syllabus of I PUC for 2022-23 which the students have learnt in the previous year and need not be deleted from the question papers.
