Students in India to have common syllabus for boards and JEE from 2023
Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), with all three of its levels, namely, Prelims, Mains and Advanced (IIT admission test) is one of the most important national level entrance exams in India for engineering aspirants.
Recently, the JEE Advanced syllabus for the year 2023 has been revised following JEE Mains’ syllabus update that was devised by the Joint Admission Board in late 2020. Both of these syllabus revisions were overseen by the exam conducting body NTA (National Testing Agency).
What significant changes were made?
Changes in the syllabus for JEE Mains were made for subjects Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, including both additions and omissions. For instance, Physics hasn’t undergone any topic exclusion. However, several topics have been added such as Electromagnetic Waves and Surface Tension.
In Chemistry, the chapter on Nuclear Physics has been omitted while many chapters have been included namely Biochemistry, Environmental Chemistry and Physical (Theoretical) Chemistry. Under Physical Chemistry, topics like classification of elements, their periodic properties, Crystal Field Theory (CFT), hydrogen, f-block elements and Chemistry in everyday life have been included.
In Mathematics, chapters on harmonic progression and triangles have been removed and replaced by Statistics, Algebra, Set theory, Elementary Row Operations and Quadratic Equations.
The revised JEE Advanced syllabus is an extension of that of the Mains.
Benefits of syllabus revision
The JEE syllabus has been revised keeping in mind the academic burden of students and has therefore been synced with the revised syllabus of CBSE’s Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics of 10+2 level that has already been in effect since the academic year 2019-2020. This will help the students efficiently prepare for both. Also, since the JEE syllabus revision will be adopted in 2023, students, especially the first-time candidates will have a two-year duration to prepare for the engineering entrance exam.
Though JEE Mains syllabus was in accordance with the CBSE syllabus earlier, certain topics and chapters that were part of JEE Advanced syllabus were missing from the CBSE curriculum. This gap has been addressed in the recent meetings. Measures will also be undertaken to help the students of the state boards avail the same advantages.
A common syllabus for school final exams (CBSE) and JEE Mains plus Advanced are aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This will also enhance the level of competition with a reduced difficulty level and the chances of overseas students to study in India’s premium tech universities will also go up. Another advantage is that this move will further India’s goal of internationalization of education.
How was the syllabus revision process undertaken?
The Joint Admission Board (JAB) had set up a syllabus revision committee that comprised of faculty members from seven IITs, namely: Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee. The faculty members were specifically chosen from the departments of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics keeping in mind the curriculum of JEE Mains and Advanced. These representatives from older IITs were given the responsibility of coming up with a newly revised syllabus along with inputs from the academic staff of the non-zonal IITs. This scheme was devised so that all 23 IITs in the country were able to take a unified final decision on the JEE syllabus.
Anyhow, the syllabus of the IITs’ engineering departments is reviewed every five years and every ten years the curriculum undergoes a revision. This is why, the entrance exam’s syllabus also needed to be tallied.