ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) has stretched the Medical and Dental Colleges Admissions Test (MDCAT) for 30 days and violated its act.
Dr Ghulam Shabir, President, Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) Punjab, said that the same tests could be given to candidates due to that decision. There could also be the possibility of giving easy questions to favourite students.
He informed that Section 18 of the Pakistan Medical Commission Act 2020 mandates a single MDCAT, so it violated rules to continuously hold tests for a month.
`Dr Ghulam was sure that the multiple-choice questions (MCQs) pool couldn't be big enough that different questions could be given throughout the month. 'I have a personal experience that students share MCQs after coming out of the hall, and some people pay students to share five questions each after the test, as a result of which they can get the entire question paper. After ten days, the entire MCQ bank becomes public,` he said.
Dr Shabir said that professional competency exams could be conducted in parts, but it was against the principle of medical education to conduct entry tests in this manner.
`Content validity counts in tests, but, strangely, students cannot even ask about the authenticity of questions.
According to rules, there should be a single test the way it was conducted by the University of Health Sciences, University of Sindh and NTS. Moreover, the result should be announced right after the test.
`The process of examination setting is quite a meticulous, analytical endeavour that requires the ratio of easy, medium and difficult questions to remain identical in the case of a standardised test that takes place over some time.`Although the MDCAT is being conducted over a month, the actual examination of its content and difficulty level remains the same.
`Please also note that the law states one exam per child. It does not state that it needs to be taken on one single day.
`The MDCAT this year is a computer-based exam, and from a logistics perspective, this is not possible to hold on a single day given the number of applicants who sit the exam across Pakistan each year.
`Thus, the examination is a standardised national test and follows global best practices whereby exams such as the SAT and GMAT are held on multiple days for prospective applicants,` he said.
'This year, given the number of students appearing in the exam across Pakistan, in the best interest of public health and safety as outlined by the NCOC against the spread of COVID-19. This approach was decided to be the most suitable. Last year, PMC held a separate MDCAT for COVID-19 positive applicants as per the judgement of the Sindh High Court.
`Receiving payments from foreign applicants was part of the Joint Agreement between TEPS and PMC because they pay through foreign accounts, and clearance takes a while if transferred to a Pakistani account.
`The applicants can't be registered without receipt of payments; thus, this step was for the applicant's benefit. Every foreign applicant is accounted for when they are registered at PMC. The number of foreign applicants is around,` he said.