By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Guwahati: Over 50,000 students, from class III to degree courses, in greater Guwahati appear in the Ajmal National Talent Search Examination (ANTSE) 2014 on Sunday, May 25, 2014 at Don Bosco School Panbazar and Sonaighuli, Pragjyotish English School Panbazar, Fairyland School Hatigaon, Maulana Azad Markaz Academy Satgaon, Angel’s Academy Kamakhya Gate and another 11 schools in the city that have been selected as venue for the ANTSE.
This year’s examination will be conducted in as many as 625 centres spread over Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, and West Bengal and all together over 50,000 students will appear in it. The cumulative tally of candidates, starting from inception year 2002, will cross the formidable figure of 3 lakh this year.
This is the one and only kind of its activity in the country and has been growing in popularity year by year. Ajmal Foundation, one of Assam’s leading education NGOs, runs 14 colleges and many more schools and other educational institutions, conducts this mammoth exercise every year to instill a spirit of competition and excellence among the youth of the region. Besides cash awards for toppers in each group, many other opportunities are made available to the best performers of ANTSE.
The logistics that goes into the conduct of ANTSE is quite mindboggling. There is a team that reaches the examination centre well in advance and helps the coordinators in conducting the exam smoothly. Immediately after the exam, the teams pack up the answer scripts and return to Hojai where an expert team does the evaluation under strict supervision and secrecy. Since the exam is of objective type and the evaluation is done by computers, there is no room for foul play or manipulation. The teams have to cover long distances – from Cooch Behar in one end to Dibrugarh on the other, and from Dhubri in once end to Dharmanagar in Tripura on the other. For example, on Saturday, Saher Ali, Assistant Controller of ANTSE had travelled to Jonai in Dhemaji District and was personally supervising the arrangements there.
Normally, after the exam is over, the coordinators hold an awareness programme for the students and their guardians during which they are provided with information about scholarships that are available from different NGOs, corporates, and government. They are told about higher courses and institutions where they could pursue those courses.
“ANTSE is not an end in itself,” said Khasrul Islam, Manager, Ajmal Foundation. He informed that for those graduation level students, who do well in ANTSE, a screening test is conducted at Cotton College, Guwahati and shortlisted few are sponsored for IAS coaching in New Delhi in collaboration with Hamdard Foundation. Quite a few such sponsored students have successfully cleared the IAS exam in the past.