Govt hopes for more medical students from govt schools

Learning from the mistakes of the past year, the School Education Department has designed the NEET course to ensure that at least 1,000 students, especially from rural areas, get admission in medical colleges. M Suresh Kumar from Aminjikarai, who just joined a special NEET coaching session, said that the study material was very useful. “In addition, audio visual sessions are very comprehensive,” he added.

Natarajan, a tutor of a coaching centre in the city, said about 15,000 aspirants are being trained in 413 coaching centres so far. From these students, 4,000 aspirants, who have scored high marks, would be trained extensively till two days before NEET. In Tamil Nadu, there are nearly 2,400 medical seats available in 22 government medical colleges.

State Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan told DT Next that this year the course material, which was designed by a group of experts, is very comprehensive to crack the NEET. He said more than 3,000 teachers were trained by the government for preparing the NEET aspirants. According to him, government school students were trained one hour on school days and three hours on holidays.

A senior official from the School Education Department said that Biology is taught with help of audio visual sessions and 3D models. He said last year most of them were theory sessions. The students are also trained with help of 50,000 question prepared by medical experts, he added.

During the NEET training sessions, experts had handpicked top students, who performed well in the coaching classes. In 2018, only four students from government schools got medical admission even though 10,000 candidates were given free training in more than 400 coaching centres.

Of the total, only 1,344 students qualified with only 10 students scoring above 300 marks and 42 students scoring above 200 marks. Due to lack of time, many students could not get complete NEET training despite Rs 3.5 crore being spent for the purpose.

Tamil Nadu government has earmarked Rs 20 crore for free NEET coaching to the students.