The anti-NEET movement in Tamil Nadu is misguided
NEET) and the controversy around medical seats in Tamil Nadu being put outside the purview of NEET for admission to undergraduate medical courses are unfortunate and raise serious concerns. Tamil Nadu has opposed the NEET since it was made compulsory in 2017.
The test was alleged to be inimical to the interests of its state board students since it is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). In 2021, the state’s government appointed a committee under the chairmanship of a retired high court judge, Justice A.K.
Rajan, to study the impact of NEET on medical admissions in Tamil Nadu. The 165-page report (bit.ly/47qNIYm) invoked “social justice" and “protection of vulnerable student communities from discrimination" in medical college admissions and cited “social accountability and professional ethics" as part of the Hippocratic Oath of physicians.
It linked medical education to social accountability and called for more diversity in the medical student base. The report dismissed the NEET on the grounds of it being based on a “rote framework" drawn from only three subjects (biology, chemistry and physics), and not on common standards and criteria.
It criticized the test’s content-based multiple choice format as a poor substitute for the more holistic school-based/board exam. Questioning the NEET’s lack of “predictive validity" on the success of students in higher studies, it argued that board exam scores provide a “reasonable yardstick" to “measure and predict the student’s academic ability and readiness to pursue medical education." The report condemned the NEET as promoting a coaching culture rather than learning, and as perpetrating cultural, regional, linguistic, and socio-economic biases that go
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