The education ministry is mulling over introduction of a new system to enrol new students in medical and dental colleges.
Health and family welfare ministry recently sent a letter to the education ministry asking to take necessary steps in this regard as early as possible.
The new method known as “National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test” will be introduced to pick quality students and to maintain standard of higher medical education.
Under the new method, medical admission seekers won’t be allowed to appear at admission tests for two consecutive years.
Only the incumbent students will be allowed to sit for exams.
Mahfuza Akter, Deputy Secretary to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), said a meeting on “Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test” was held on April 10 presided over by the health minister.
A resolution was taken up to retain higher education standard and to select best students through the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test for 2013-2014 session.
The new move for recruitment of medical students created an utter confusion among thousands of aspiring freshmen about the admission system this year, thus causing them to start making queries to the health ministry as well as the Directorate of Health Services about the matter.
Motiur Rahman, joint secretary to MoHFW, (medical education) told the Dhaka Tribune “We are thinking about the new system, but it won’t be introduced from this year.
Director General of Health Services (DGHS) will centrally conduct the admission test for both public and private medical and dental colleges with identical questions on the same day all over the country as earlier, he added.
The admission seekers will have to take the test which will have multiple choice questions containing 100 marks while another 100 will constitute with a percentage score counted from the obtained marks of SSC and HSC.
According to DGHS’s medical education section, there are 2,812 seats in 23 public medical colleges and 7,612 in 54 private medical colleges. There are also 532 seats in public and 1592 in 14 private dental colleges.