met prof. BS Ramachandra Rao (BSR) today. A retired professor of maths from IIT Bombay, BSR now teaches at BASE, the biggest JEE coaching center in Bangalore. was talking to him about the JEE pattern change.
He said that the basic motivation for the IITs was to reduce the burden of valuation of answer scripts which no one wanted to do. Apparently, IITD has been outsourcing valuation of answer scripts to DU profs since none of their profs want to do it. Similarly with IITK. And there have been no quality checks on these valuations which might be producing fraudulent results. Remember that even a couple of marks here or there in the JEE can move you by a few hundred ranks.
I then asked him as a coaching factory teacher, how he has reacted to the changes. He replied that the focus now was on concepts (as I had predicted) and that his teaching methodology hadn’t changed except that he doesn’t work out long problems in class now. He was a little pissed that the other teachers in the factory had changed their methods too much and have started neglecting concepts – which he maintained were still paramount.
Interesting… and yeah, he hadn’t read my article in the papers. Said he would this evening.