To some extent, NLSIU Bangalore can’t be faulted for the lack of quantity in its communication about the last-minute announcement of the National Law Aptitude Test (NLAT), with its frequently asked questions (FAQ) page having seen an average of half a dozen or more updates per day.
And, for all its other faults, the NLAT has been supremely agile in updating its own format and making changes to its test and software.
And the NLAT and NLS people in charge have certainly not be en slacking and have all been burning the midnight oil, we understand (though it’s hard to feel too much sympathy, since the arguably impossibly-short timelines are entirely self-inflicted by the powers that be).
That said, it’s great to see feedback getting taken on board. However, all the last-minute changes (not at all helped by the 11th hour announcement) are causing candidates some serious confusion and befuddlement, and it may be too little, far too late.
This liveblog therefore intends to track and comment (and allow commenting) on the latest changes announced by NLSIU specifically about the NLAT, particularly since many of those announcements have been disseminated in an ad hoc manner to students via the FAQ page and social media channels of NLSIU.
We are tracking the FAQ pages and other channels of the NLAT closely and will update the headline of the article with each addition.
Please scroll to the bottom of the article for the latest updates and let us know in the comments or via the tips if there are any recent developments we have missed out on.
Furthermore, some important questions are not being asked or answered on the FAQs so we asked them, and whenever we have asked the NLSIU administration for comment or answers, we have not received any response.
So, in the absence of answers, we may also speculate on some possible reasons or answers.
Background
NLSIU Bangalore’s National Law Aptitude Test (NLAT) exam, launched exactly a week ago (3 September) and happening in two days (12 September). It directly competes with the other national law schools’ Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), which NLSIU used to be a part of.
But while the CLAT will be held in physical test centres, the NLAT will be an online proctored test, like the LSAT-India and the SLAT of Symbiosis.
Unlike with those other two tests, online proctoring raises its own class of problems for NLSIU, particularly when we are looking at entrance to the most popular law school, in the most competitive and popular law entrance test in India.
Tuesday, 8 September 2020
The NLS FAQs page was updated late on Tuesday (8 September) with three new points in a section entitled “exam related queries”.
3 different question papers
Two days ago we had put to NLSIU vice-chancellor (VC) Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy and registrar Prof Sarasu Thomas the following two questions (we were not the only ones to have asked these):
- How many candidates have registered for NLAT so far? All home-proctored tests for law schools in India so far, have run their exams in staggered batches of several hundreds candidates at once. We would assume that the NLAT will have tens of thousands taking the exam at the same time. How can so many candidates be proctored at once by live humans, without hiring hundreds if not thousands of proctors?
- Further to the above, is there any risk of network congestion or other technical issues on the day for so many candidates? Since the mock exams are spread over three days, from 9-11 September, that leaves very little time to fix any technical errors that come up or to stress test the service on 12 September, when everyone will be logging in within very small time window?
Neither has responded as at the time of publication.
However, NLSIU announced on its FAQ page (the change were first spotted by @dayaar_s, on Twitter) that, indeed, like other home-proctored exams such as Symbiosis law school’s and the LSAT-India, it would not be conducting the exam in one massive batch:
Will there be normalisation of scores in UG NLAT 2020?
UG NLAT 2020 will be conducted in three sessions in line with other large examinations. It is possible that in spite of all efforts to maintain equivalence among various question papers, the difficulty level of the question papers administered in different sessions may not exactly be the same.
To overcome this, a Normalization procedure will be used to compile law scores across batches and ensure a level playing field where candidates are neither benefitted nor disadvantaged due to the difficulty level of the exam.
This, at least partially, may address some of the issues we had raised, though this could come with their own concerns.
Normalisation & separate exam pitfalls
Normalisation is not very easy to do, particularly at very short notice and without some serious testing. Who can say without testing that one question that appears in only one paper is not unintentionally and exclusively disadvantageous against candidates from certain backgrounds?
If everyone performs badly one on exam, normalisation will help, but the approach of just having three different papers is less advanced statistically than what some others have followed.
We had interviewed the LSAT-India India head Yusuf Abdul-Kareem in-depth in July about its home-proctored exam, which used US exam giant Pearson Vue’s technology back-end.
He had made it categorically clear that LSAT had been very fortunate to have staggered its exam dates.
The LSAT-India saw around 5,500 candidates take the exam over eight days, in around three slots per day, giving around 24 sessions in total. The main reason for this was to ensure that any technical or other issues faced by a batch could potentially be dealt with in real time and could re-take the test on another day (as happened to around 14% of 1,000 candidates who sat on the first day).
LSAT-India normalises its questions for each examinee (even in the same session), so theoretically no two candidates have the same paper, and then normalises scores. The advantage of this is that considering the larger number of questions, and checking how well the average candidate performed on each question, there is less of an element of one entire test paper accidentally being dodgy or containing so many or such errors to throw off all the stats completely, or being much easier or much more difficult than the other papers, which would start to make the normalisation statistics less effective.
Merit list: Now to be published, but without scores
After much criticism that the NLAT would not be transparent, due to the initial announcement that NLS would not publish a merit list, there has been a U-turn.
The FAQ asked:
Will NLSIU be publishing a merit list?
A General Merit list will be prepared prior to admissions and all students may access the marks secured and rank using their admissions login. The Provisional admission list will be provided with the names and ranks of selected students. The Marks secured by other students are personal information protected from disclosure.
One way questions
We had in July (pre-Claxit) reported the issue of not being able to navigate between questions and sections, which led to the CLAT changing and fixing it by the second mock, to allow candidates to skip between sections and questions.
Not so in the NLAT, which is purely a one-way process.
According to the FAQ, this is primarily security related:
Why does the NLAT 2020 not permit candidates to review/ revisit questions?
This is one of the measures taken to prevent candidate malpractices. In combination with the scoring pattern of the NLAT 2020 and the randomised sequencing of question sets for each candidate, this will help towards preventing unauthorised collaboration among candidates and among candidates and others.
Wednesday, 9 September 2020
A raft of changes were announced on Wednesday.
What is malpractice?
The FAQ addressed the question “what can be constituted as malpractice during the NLAT 2020?”.
The answers:
Impersonation (during candidate validation prior to examination commencement)
Inappropriate surroundings at test location External help solicited (suspected)/ Someone other than permitted scribes present in the vicinity Candidate looking in other directions continuously/ periodically Candidate talking/ communicating in any other manner with someone other than permitted scribes Talking/Speaking/Making Gestures (could include gestures that indicate use of another device/ looking at chat applications/ mirror/ other screen, etc.)
Window Switch (Accessing any other window other than the test window)
Candidate’s Face not Detected (Candidate not present in front of system)
Multiple persons detected
Foreign Device Observed (Mobile/Tablets/Calculators etc.)
Candidates observed wearing Earphones/Headphones/Bluetooth Audio devices
Simultaneous login attempts from multiple devices
We’re doing a more detailed article about malpractice shortly, so keep your eyes peeled.
How will proctors deal with power cuts? Outlook not so good
Instructions will be provided to candidates on the test screen as well as in advance of the examination in a ‘Candidate Manual’ in relation to situations such as power cuts/ internet failures. The assessment system used for the NLAT 2020 can permit the candidate to continue answering the question paper in the event of internet failure;
However, this is subject to the Proctor’s discretion, and subject to the candidate’s system re-connecting to the examination interface within the time frame, and in the manner stipulated in the on-screen instructions and the Candidate Manual.
That’s not entirely clear. Can you continue taking the exam when your power cuts out for longer than 10 minutes? At what point does a proctor or AI system decide it’s your fault when you are living in an area with terrible power supply or a terrible internet service provider (without naming names).
External webcams now allowed
Since the exam is supposedly available on desktop computers, but most desktop computers don’t have internal webcams, NLAT has notified the following:
Are external webcams allowed for NLAT 2020?
Yes, candidates can use external webcams for the test if their device does not have an in-built camera with the required specifications.
Thursday, 10 September
With two days to go until the exam, hot out of the gates today are more major announcements from NLS.
Simulation, like the Matrix?
The mock exam that started yesterday was basically the original 10-question sample PDF paper (first shared on 3 September), stuck into a learning management system (LMS).
However, this test apparently did not include live proctoring and the software doodad candidates need to install on their computers to ensure the computers are locked down.
So, the FAQs now state:
Will a simulation test be available?
Yes. A Simulation Test of the exact NLAT examination process will be available for candidates on September 11, 2020 at the same time as their batch for the actual NLAT exam.
Registered candidates will receive details regarding this Simulation Test on their registered Phone Numbers and Email addresses.
Timings for the three slots announced
Some might argue notifying exam timings literally two days before the exam is a bit late, but better late than never, NLSIU announced on its Instagram account that the exam would be held in three slots:
Batch 1:
Reporting time 12:00pm
Exam Start time: 12:30pm
Batch 2:
Reporting time 1:45pm
Exam Start time: 2:15pm
Batch 3:
Reporting time 3:30pm
Exam Start time: 4:00pm
What it says above: the first-filed anti-NLAT writ petition in the Jharkhand high court has been listed for hearing as the last item today.
Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya is appearing for NLSIU.