Delhi: Coaching centres offer courses to prep students for university test

National Testing Agency, which will conduct the exam, has said that the test will be based on the Class 12 syllabus prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

With the University Grants Commission (UGC) making Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) as the only criteria for admission to undergraduate courses, coaching centres in Delhi have started offering preparatory packages and crash courses to students.

Delhi University currently follows the merit-based admission process for admission to all undergraduate programmes excluding nine courses for which NTA conducts entrance exams (Picture for representation only/HT Archive)

The National Testing Agency, which will conduct the exam, has said that the test will be based on the Class 12 syllabus prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), but the coaching centres said that there was a demand for coaching from anxious parents and students.

Anurag Tiwari, national academic director (Medical), Aakash+BYJU’S, shared that the coaching chain was offering an online crash course which included live classes and tests spread across a time duration of around one and a half months. “The test series and test and discussion series are spread across a duration of one month each,” said Tiwari.

As part of the crash course offered by the coaching chain, students will be provided with study materials in all the subjects included in CUCET such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, English, general awareness and numerical aptitude and Logical Reasoning.

“The first batch of the crash course has already begun. In the first batch, those topics (of CUCET syllabus) are being taught to the students which are part of their CBSE Term 2 syllabus of Class 12 as well. After boards exams, the second batch of CUCET crash course will begin in the first week of June,” said Tiwari, adding that the offline crash course for CUCET 2022 will be initiated in June.

Keshav Agarwal, president, Educators Society - a consortium of around 300 coaching centres in Delhi, said that there was not enough clarity about the entrance due to which parents and students were confused and seeking support from coaching centres. “Everyone has sensed a new opportunity so they have started making packages to cater to the demands of students. It’s crucial for the authorities to underline that the paper will be based on what students have studied in school otherwise the lack of clarity will drive students to coaching centres,” said Agarwal, who is also director of Exemplar Point Pvt Ltd coaching centre.

He added that CUCET should have been notified much earlier to give students sufficient time for preparation. Agarwal’s centre is currently offering 45-day crash courses focusing on CUCET alongside the introduction of new yearly batches for the test.

Jibani Swanni Kapoor, associate vice-president, PRATHAM Test Prep, said that the institute was offering both online as well as offline courses for CUCET. Online courses had been going on since December last year, and offline courses would be initiated soon, Kapoor said.

“The timing of the entrance coincides with the board exam so it’s not possible for one to have what we call “crash courses” now. We started our crash course much earlier in December since we knew that the entrance was in the offing. We have around seven batches right now for CUCET,” Kapoor added. She said while many students had signed up for one year or two-year preparatory courses much earlier, the number of registrations and queries from students increased manifold since the UGC notified the entrance test.

School heads in the Capital have also raised concerns that the focus on CUCET might distract students from the preparation of CBSE Term II examination that begins on April 26. Sudha Acharya, the chairperson of the National Progressive School Conference (NPSC) that has 122 Delhi schools as members, including Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Bal Bharati Public School, Springdales School, Sanskriti School, Delhi Public Schools, Ahlcon International School, and Amity International School, said that students had already started receiving calls from coaching centres offering preparation for CUET.

“Students are getting calls from coaching centres for CUCET. Their parents have been receiving calls offering them three-month packages from April to June for preparation of the test. This period also coincides with the duration of the board exams which are starting from April 26 and will continue till June 15,” said Acharya. She said that students were anxious and enrolling for coaching since they had not been given sufficient time to prepare for the CUCET.

Delhi University (DU) currently follows the merit-based admission process for admission to all undergraduate programmes excluding nine courses for which NTA conducts entrance exams. NTA also conducts entrance tests for all postgraduate courses in DU.

CUCET, which is envisaged in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, was scheduled to start in the 2021-22 academic session, but the government put it on hold in view of the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. UGC constituted a seven-member committee last year to recommend modalities for CUCET that held several rounds of discussion and submitted its findings in December, people familiar with the matter added on condition of anonymity.

In a letter dated November 26 addressed to the vice-chancellors of all 45 central universities, including Delhi University (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), UGC said CUCET will be conducted from academic session 2022-23.

CUCET, a computerised exam, will be conducted in 13 languages: English, Hindi, Gujarati, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The union ministry of education is yet to finalise the modalities of the test.