State board students at receiving end of skewed KEAM standardisation

AS CANDIDATES gear up for this year's Kerala Engineering, Architecture, and Medical (KEAM) entrance exam, to be held from April 24-28, the issue of standardisation continues to haunt those who have cleared their qualifying exam from schools under the state's general education department.

- ANU KURUVILLA @Kochi

Students allege that the standardisation process has hit them badly. In the 2024 KEAM, Plus Two students from state schools lost as much as 27 marks.

One of their grievances has been the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations (CEE) Kerala persisting with a formula that was arrived at 10 years ago by an expert committee constituted pursuant to a petition filed by CBSE and ICSE students. According to a teacher who didn't want to be named, CBSE and ICSE students, in their petition, contended that the decision to prepare the rank list with equal weight accorded to grades obtained in the entrance and qualifying examinations was hurting their rankings. "The decision to give equal weighting to entrance and qualifying marks was made in a GO in 2011. The decision was arrived to curb the dependence on entrance coaching centres," the teacher said.