In a historic move, the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a bill to provide for 7.5% quota within the existing reservation framework for students who had studied in state government schools and clearing the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
This will be implemented from the present academic year.
The decision has been taken following the submission of a report by the one man Commission under Justice P. Kalaiyarasan earlier in June 2020 that pointed out the socio-economic disparities between government and private school students.
This 7.5% quota is considered for implementation in private colleges too.
Of the total 59,785 candidates who took the exam from Tamil Nadu in 2019, only 2557 students from government and government-aided private schools cleared the exam. Only five of them reportedly got admitted under the government quota for the 2019-20 academic year. However, this phenomenon does not seem to be because of NEET as the number of government school students getting medical admission has remained low for a long time.
Between 2009 and 2013, merely 177 Tamil Nadu government school students secured MBBS admissions. In 2014, the number was 32, in 2015 and 2016 it was 35, though considerably above the numbers reported for 2018 and 2019.
Experts point out that the reason that apart from the inability to afford coaching class, is the poor standard of the Samacheer Kalvi syllabus introduced in 2009 by the then Karunanidhi that deteriorated teaching standards and learning outcomes of government school students thereby impacting their critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Back in 2006, the DMK government under Karunanidhi abolished the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examinationexams for professional courses like engineering and medicine. Since then, admissions to these professional courses happened through 12th standard results which were heavily inflated.
The NEET was mandated by the Supreme Court of India in 2016 when it overturned its own judgement delivered in 2013 that declared the exam as unconstitutional.
Since then, NEET has been conducted every year across India for admission into undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses.