Why in News:

• Admission to undergraduate  courses  in  all  government-funded  universities  and  colleges will soon be through all-India entrance tests, if the draft National Education Policy is approved.

Background: / More in News

• Private institutes will also be strongly encouraged to make use of the common admission tests, which will be available from 2020. Both aptitude and subject knowledge-based tests will be offered.
• According to draft policy,
• This  seems  to  indicate  that the  NTA  assessment  will  replace  Class  12  marks  as  the criteria for admission to these government funded institutions.
• The NTA tests will aim to assess essential concepts, knowledge, and higher order skills from the national common curriculum as per the NCF in each subject, for the purpose of aiding colleges and universities in their admissions decisions.
• This  will  help  to  eliminate  the  intensity,  stressfulness,  and  wasted  time  of  the  Grade  12 examination season faced by students every year as well as by so many higher educational institutions and employers
• The system seems to have some similarities to the SAT, a standardised aptitude test widely used for admissions to colleges and universities in the United States. The SAT, however, is used as a criterion alongside school grades.
• In India, the common entrance test has largely been the domain of aspirants to professional or post-graduate courses, but that is already changing.
• The new National Testing Agency (NTA) has already conducted premier professional entrance tests — JEE, NEET, and CMAT — this year.
• NTA  will  also  conduct  admission  tests  for  applicants  to  more  than  170  Delhi  University (DU) courses, including 12 undergraduate programmes.

National Testing Agency:

• National Testing Agency (NTA) is an Indian government agency that has been approved by the  Union  Council  of  Ministers  and  established  in  November  2017  to  conduct  entrance examinations for higher educational institutions
• It also helps individual colleges and universities in the field of testing and to provide training and advisory services to the institutions in India. It provides quality testing services to the academic institutions in India.
• It undertakes the reforms and training of school boards as well as other bodies where the testing standards should be comparable with the entrance examinations.