Tag Archives: COVID-19 Precautions

The Director-General of National Testing Agency, Mr Vineet Joshi, has said that the new list of new NEET exam centres will be released within a week. The list will have information about all the exam centres which are now being added to improve social distancing norms considering the situation of COVID-19 pandemic across the country. The list for new exam centres for the JEE Main 2020 will also be announced.

In an interview, he said, “We are in talks with all the organizations and the list of examination centres will be announced within a week, and not more than that.”

Mr Vineet Joshi also said that the examination body, NTA, is going for trials runs of home-based “proctored” tests for some small examinations in order to combat the risks of travelling amid COVID-19 outbreak. He added, “We are trying to introduce this for the smaller examinations for now. We’ll begin the smaller ones, learn the lessons and move on the bigger examinations soon enough.” Although, NEET and JEE Main would not come under this.

Social Distancing Guidelines For Students

New exam guidelines are being set up as a precautionary measure which shall be followed at NEET Exam Centres. He stated that parents will be asked not to escort their children to the exam centres except if it is very essential such as in the case of an exam centre being situated in the outskirts of a city or if the child has special needs. He said that barricading shall be in place to ensure that candidates do not crowd at gates or break social distancing. Entry will also be maintained in such a way that the gates do not get too crowded. Social distancing will be followed before, during and after the examination.

Conducting Exams with Extra Rooms and Centers

NEET is conducted in Pen and Paper mode only. Moreover, the examination shall be conducted on a single day i.e. 26th July 2020 with approximately 11 lakh aspirants appearing for the examination. According to Mr Joshi, NTA is under talks with schools and colleges to provide extra rooms and centres so that maximum number of centres are available to maintain social distancing. This will also help students get their first preference for the exam centre. But this also raises a question of whether the newly set-up exam centres will be able to prevent any leakage of data?

A lot of students face problems due to missing photographs or documents. Students will be asked to carry a photograph so that they can appear for the examination. But “no student shall be turned away because of these problems”, he said.

On dates of NEET Admit Card, he said that if the situation is stable, admit cards will be released around 21 days prior to the exam dates. And for NEET 2020 Results, they will try to release the results in about 15 to 20 days after the exams are concluded as inspection of OMR sheets might take some time. While for the results of JEE Main, he told that NTA would be able to release results soon after the exam as JEE is conducted completely in computer-based mode.

On NEET 2020 being conducted in Pen and Paper mode, he said that they are reviewing the possibility of conducting future NEET examinations in an online computer-based mode as the ‘logistics of computer exams are much easier to maintain than an exam on pen and paper.’