The Supreme Court’s anguished observation about education authorities “failing to learn lessons” comes in the context of the recent National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) question leak and cancellation. An ongoing crackdown is targeting the network believed to be responsible for the leak, but this comes two years too late. The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the NEET, clearly failed to investigate the 2024 allegations of discrepancies and malpractice, which could likely have helped prevent the current fiasco.
However, the apex court’s remonstrance applies to the general cohort of education regulators in India. Just days after the NEET episode, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s measure to ensure a transparent board examination re-evaluation process suffered several glitches and discrepancies, including blurry images of scanned answer-sheets uploaded, mismatched answer-sheets and missing sheets from the answer-booklet. In 2024, the education ministry had scrapped the National Eligibility Test (NET) because of compromised examination integrity. And last year, the higher education accreditation system came under a cloud after bribery for top-tier rating was exposed with the arrests of several members of a National Assessment-cum-Accreditation Council (NAAC) committee. NAAC fired 900 of its close to 6,000 assessors.
All these instances — and many others at the state level — undermine the confidence of the student community (and, indeed, the larger population) in the state of education regulation in the country. For India’s overwhelmingly young population, education remains one of the surest pathways to realising its aspirations. But if the student community has to face anxiety, lost chances, and a waste of its energy, resources and time with frequent regulatory failures, it isn’t just their future that is in crisis, but that of the entire nation.
