NIOS to fight MCI barring open school students from NEET

NIOS officials say talks will be held with the government regarding the decision. Meanwhile, students are a worried lot. K Nadeesh, had dropped out of school in 2016 due to personal reasons. This year, he has decided to write the board exams through NIOS and also appear for NEET. “We are still not clear about our future. All my efforts will go waste if this is implemented.”       

With more parents opting to home school their children, this decision is being seen as a setback by many. Vidya Shankar, founder of Cascade Family Learning Cooperative, working with children who are home-schooled, says, “NIOS is a body by the government and it does not make any sense to bar them from writing competitive exams. Passing the NIOS exams is not easy. 

People often assume that the students have it easy but that is not true. What is the point of having an open education system if the higher education system is discriminatory towards it?”    

Around 2 lakh students register every year with NIOS. In 2017, close to 3,000 had registered for NEET. P Ravi, Regional Director of NIOS says that nobody can decide the journey a student wants to take. 

“The point of writing NEET is to check the ability of a student to pursue medicine. If he/she achieves that by studying in school or studying at home, it should not matter. There are around 1,000 NIOS applicants, who clear the exam every year and this decision will be unfair to many,” says Ravi. 

He further adds, “Even JEE recognises NIOS. Last year a boy named Arjun Bharat, who passed out from NIOS), was the state topper with the 26th rank in Joint Entrance Exams (Advanced). When I asked him why he chose open schooling, he said he wanted to study at his own pace. 

He wanted to handle a chapter at his convenience and not follow a prescribed pattern. Barring NIOS student will not do any good. We don’t know what prompted MCI to take the decision, which we will oppose.”