Scrapping KVPY works against 'Inspiring' science talent in India

Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana, abbreviated as the more-easily pronounceable KVPY, was a competitive aptitude test conducted by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, aimed at spotting and encouraging young talent in sciences, with scholarships. Around 2,000 KVPY scholarships were given out every year for students to pursue research in the sciences.

It has been scrapped from this year.

Officially, no reasons were given. But it is speculated that a judgment of the Madras High Court’s Madurai Bench, in October 2021, ordering the government to hold the exam in multiple languages (KVPY was held only in Hindi and English) was the reason behind the scrapping. The government apparently found the costs required to conduct KVPY in multiple languages too high.

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Now, KVPY scholarships will be ‘subsumed’ under another, larger scholarship programme called Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research, popularly, Inspire. About 12,000 candidates are expected to be offered Inspire scholarships this year. Existing KVPY fellows will continue to receive the scholarship till they complete the courses in which they are enrolled.

KVPY, Inspire have structural differences

Does the scrapping of KVPY and subsuming it under Inspire make sense?

Well, KVPY and Inspire have structural differences.

Inspire now offers two routes for Scholarship for Higher Education (SHE). In the first, called the State and Central Board (SCB) channel, a student’s Class 12 score must be within the top 1 percentile in the board concerned.

This 1 percentile cut-off varies across boards. For instance, in 2021, for the Jharkhand board, the cut-off was 79.6%. For CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), the cut-off was pegged at 96.4%. It was an even higher 98.6% for the Telangana board.

A student who meets the cut-off qualifies to appear for a special exam called IISER Aptitude Test (IAT) for admission to the seven Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) across India.

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The second route to Inspire scholarships is by managing a rank within 10,000 in the JEE (Advanced) exam, which selects students primarily for the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Those who clear JEE (Advanced) this way need not go through IAT.

Problem with Inspire

So, what is the problem in clubbing KVPY with Inspire? While the JEE route to Inspire scholarships is somewhat like that of KVPY, the SCB channel, which focusses on board exam performance, does not test aptitude towards science as KVPY did. While those who make it above the eligibility cut-off in various board exams do go through the IAT, the IAT itself is perceived to be relatively easier.

For instance, out of 358 applicants for IAT from Chhattisgarh in 2021, 258 made it. Out of 228 who applied from Gujarat, which had a 1 percentile cut-off at 88.8%, 173 got through. The story is similar across various state boards, pointing to a very high rate of success in entering IISERs among board exam toppers.

The government’s portal for Inspire programme says: “A striking feature of the programme is that it does not believe in conducting competitive exams for identification of talent at any level. It believes in and relies on the efficacy of the existing educational structure for identification of talent.”

But there is a big question mark over the efficacy of the ‘existing educational structure’ in identifying scientific aptitude.

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In contrast, KVPY was an aptitude test and had not been linked to high performance in board exams. It was held under three streams – SA (class 11), SX (class 12), and SB (first-year undergraduate programme). More importantly, unlike any other competitive exam, KVPY did not have a syllabus — perhaps how an ideal aptitude test should be. It also had an interview component that helped test an aspirant’s aptitude in person.

Chinks in KVPY, too 

But over time, KVPY’s structural weaknesses became more pronounced. Across the country, coaching institutes, which were in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) territory, began offering classes for KVPY, too. Since any exam that has been conducted regularly for a long enough period lends itself to pattern-cracking, the students were made to go through the past years’ question papers, crack patterns and prepare accordingly. This shifted the focus from testing aptitude to pattern cracking.

Secondly, aspirants found common ground between the test conducted for admission to IITs and engineering colleges and used KVPY in Class 11 (the SA stream) as a mock test while preparing for the extraordinarily competitive JEE the next year to enter engineering streams that were not eligible for KVPY scholarship.

There have been attempts to reform KVPY, to make it a test that would help identify potential talent in science. A former professor in a prominent IISER, who took part in such efforts some years ago, says he suggested the formation of a small panel that would set the guidelines for how KVPY could be reorganised in high-powered meetings specifically convened to address issues with the programme.

There was much initial excitement. But soon the enthusiasm waned, and nothing happened. It was perhaps not incompetence, but a clear unwillingness to rock the boat that came in the way of reforming KVPY.

Faculty unwillingness

The professor who functioned as faculty in some of the programmes for Inspire scholars, also says that the programmes did not contribute to student learning in terms of critical thinking abilities, let alone scientific temper.

“Worse still, we as faculty are not motivated to work together to help students develop the capacity for inquiry and critical thinking, as the first step towards their becoming researchers. In one of the Inspire camps I was invited to, I tried to get the other faculty to come up with a coherent curriculum for the camp, instead of offering a random assortment of supermarket items. The idea was to have a few email exchanges or Zoom conversations on what learning outcomes we are aiming at and what exposition or activities we are planning to use to achieve those goals. Nothing happened. The faculty that was invited had no interest in talking to the others.”

Encouraging young research talent in science with scholarships calls for serious thinking beyond reacting to a court order that is seen to inflate the costs of conducting such an exercise. Making sure the scholarships go to students who need them (there are Inspire fellows at IISERs who save on expenses and send money home), creating and sustaining an aptitude test that outsmarts coaching institutes, spreading the net wider across all sections of society equitably, and finding willing and competent faculty that would contribute to student learning could be some of the first steps to consider if we don’t want lakhs of youngsters across India, with a talent for scientific research, to slip through our fingers.

(The author consults in the education domain. He can be reached at srihamsa@gmail.com) 

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)