Making exams safer is a good idea. But India should not depend on just one national exam system

One good thing that came out of the student protests is that the government is finally taking exam paper leaks seriously. It wants tougher punishments for people who leak question papers. It has also created a committee to make exams more secure. This time, the committee is led by Nandan Nilekani, who helped start Infosys and led the Aadhaar project. Because he has a strong record in using technology, many people believe he can help make exams fairer and more transparent.

Technology can make exams much safer. It can protect question papers, improve the way answer sheets are checked, and reduce mistakes while announcing results. Other countries have shown this is possible. China’s Gaokao and South Korea’s Suneung are huge exams that use technology to keep cheating and leaks under control. But technology cannot solve every problem.

Since it was created almost nine years ago, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has made several serious mistakes. One of the worst happened in 2020, when a student named Vidhi Suryavanshi was wrongly told she had scored only 6 marks in NEET. Her real score was 590. Such errors show that the system still has big weaknesses.

NTA was created so that students across India could take one common exam and compete fairly for college seats. But the system has also created new problems. Because everyone writes the same exam, coaching centres have become even more powerful. Also, many NTA exams are based mainly on NCERT textbooks. This makes it harder for students who study in state boards, especially those from poorer families, because their school syllabus is often different. This does not mean NTA should be shut down. But while the government is making changes, it should fix these problems too.

One idea is to have a mixed system. NTA exams like NEET and CUET could be used to fill only some of the seats in government colleges across India. State governments could use their own entrance exams to fill the rest, as they did earlier. This would give states a bigger role in education again. It would also make the system safer because if one exam is leaked, it would not affect every college seat in the country.

The government should look at all possible ideas and build an exam system that is fair, reliable and works well for every student.

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