Despite quota, medical admissionis tough for govt. school students
The name to analyse the affect on social justice as a result of imposition of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to MBBS has as soon as once more put the highlight on the uneven challenges aspiring medical students from totally different strata of society face.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has known as for analyzing the legality and feasibility of options to entrance exams within the State for the admission course of.
For students, the priority is how the admission course of will evolve now that the State authorities has cancelled Class 12 exams, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Union Education Ministry is but to declare whether or not NEET and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) can be held. Data for 15 years, together with from the Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, present that authorities school students discover it difficult to enter medical schools. Between 2006 and 2016, 340 authorities school students had been admitted to authorities medical schools. The greatest yr for authorities colleges was 2007 when 62 students had been admitted. The worst yr was 2013, when simply 18 students made it.
Similarly, within the decade 2007 to 2016, 74 students from authorities colleges had been admitted to aided/personal medical schools, with admission being in single digits annually, besides in 2014, when 12 students had been admitted.
In 2017, the State bought an exemption from admitting students by way of NEET in authorities medical schools. For self-financing medical schools although admission was by way of NEET, and solely two authorities school students bought admitted.
In 2018-19 and in 2019-20, of the round 700 authorities school students who certified by way of NEET, solely 9 had been admitted to authorities medical schools, The Puucho had reported earlier. Things drastically improved in 2020, when the State authorities got here up with 7.5% reservation for authorities school students in medical seats. This enabled over 300 students to understand their dream of entering into medical schools. This included 237 students in authorities medical schools and 97 beneath authorities quota in self-financing medical schools.
General secretary of the Doctor’s Association for Social Equality G.R. Ravindranath goes one step additional, declaring that whereas students from CBSE colleges had an edge earlier earlier than NEET, after its introduction, students who had been coached in residential personal colleges fared higher.
In the final two years, the Kilpauk Medical College Alumni Association has managed to fund just a few seats in authorities medical schools. The affiliation has a motivated group of students from the primary yr who mentor aspiring medical students. “The 7.5% quota system helped ensure seats. Without that it will be challenging. KMC alumni will facilitate the government, whatever the process,” mentioned Prasad Manne, secretary.
Manickavel Arumugam, an unbiased analyst, believes that the difficulty of presidency school students “was well addressed” by way of the reservation. “Even if you go back to marks-based admission, we never had such a huge representation from government school students in medical admission. If you look at the data from 2006-2016, we had an average of less than 1% students from government schools,” he says.
With an estimated 1,650 seats prone to be added this yr from new authorities medical schools, extra students may gain advantage if a sure variety of seats are reserved for authorities school students.