NEET or not? Confusion reveals deeper faultlines in India’s Psychology education system

NEET or not? Confusion reveals deeper faultlines in India’s Psychology education system Premium

On November 21, the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) issued a notification that seemed to indicate appearing for the NEET would now be a mandatory eligibility criterion for allied healthcare professions. A sentence reads, “the entry criteria for admission to Allied and Healthcare courses to be defined have been incorporated in the notified curricula. In the majority of curricula notified have one of the eligibility criteria for admission is appearing in the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) exam over and above other criteria. Admission to these courses is slated to begin from the 2026–27 academic year. ”

This indicates even though the nomenclature and courses for them were yet to be finalised, the eligibility for them was already updated.

Under the NCAHP Act 2021, Psychology and Allied Psychology professions are now under NCAHP. Hence, word quickly spread that the NEET requirement would be mandatory for the incoming batch of Psychology students.

Chinchu C., Consulting Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Pondicherry University, noticed littered over his LinkedIn at least 50 posts from various members of the Psychology fraternity, affirming the statement that Psychology would be a NEET-based course.

Prof. Chinchu explained why the notice was misread. While it mentioned NEET as an “additional admission criterion,” it did not specify which courses it applied to. This led many to assume that all programmes under the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions, including the newly introduced B.Psy curriculum, would require a NEET score.

Prof. Chinchu, however, clarified the model curriculum for Psychology does not mandate NEET; the requirement applies primarily to paramedical and diagnostic courses such as Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Radiology, and Dialysis Technology. “Psychology was simply grouped under the broader umbrella of allied healthcare, and people understandably panicked. But if you read the curriculum closely, NEET is not listed as an admission requirement for B.Psy”, he said.

Later, when the NCAHP released its next circular, the ambiguity stayed. Instead of listing the programmes for which NEET was mandatory, the commission repeated the same phrasing, leaving Psychology bundled into the wider family of allied health courses. As a result, the panic only grew and was fuelled by hurried interpretations on LinkedIn, WhatsApp groups, and college counselling circles. “Many universities may still choose to demand NEET, because they read the NCAHP notice as a blanket instruction”, predicts Prof. Chinchu. This, according to him, is why panic spread, even though the model curriculum does not mandate it.

As of now, the only hard requirement for the new B Psychology course i the candidate must have studied Psychology or Biology in their higher secondary. The dilemma across school boards is that Psychology is rarely offered in science streams. It appears only in humanities combinations. This automatically makes science students ineligible, and the chance to study Psychology at the +2 level is rare. In Kerala, for instance, Psychology is offered in only some schools, concentrated in Malappuram and Thrissur, leaving entire districts without access. A majority of students who want to study Psychology do not get exposure to it in school. Thus, the NCAHP eligibility rule locks many students out.

Higher secondary school psychology teacher Suny Alex says, “The syllabus has not seen a single revision since 2017,” and when NCERT deleted core chapters during the COVID years to reduce student burden, “the biological and social bases of behaviour never came back.” Ms. Alex teaches at a public school that follows the SCERT syllabus and also sits on question paper panels for the Psychology board examination that Class 12 Psychology students will take. As a result, students now “learn Psychology without learning the brain,” forcing teachers to rebuild foundations from scratch. Teachers still depend heavily on NCERT/SCERT-provided pen drive content that comes straight from Delhi.

As for updating the content, there are gross errors in theoretical knowledge. Ms. Alex cites the use of DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) categorisation of mental diseases that clubs OCD as an anxiety disorder in many schools, even though under the latest DSM-5, OCD is classified as a separate mental disorder altogether. “Such errors are disheartening, especially when they persist over the years with no correction”, says Ms. Alex.

Students entering higher education are often still undecided about their careers; expecting them to choose Psychology this early is unrealistic, according to Ms. Alex. For the rigour of a competency-based course like the proposed B.Psy, there is a major gap to bridge, both in the way the syllabus is structured and in how the subject is tested. Question papers are almost always kept at a direct, definition-based level with no application-based units in the paper.

There is an unsaid understanding amongst teachers, and every year, repeated requests are made to the setter to avoid complicated concepts. “We are told repeatedly not to ask application-based or analytical questions. The paper should be easy to attempt.”, says Ms. Alex. There is little to no exposure to practical experiments at a plus 2 level. “Post COVID, the number of practicals were brought down from eight to six. No equipment is used anymore; all tests are paper and pencil.”

Psychology as a subject is scarcely available to students and more so to those coming from a non-humanities stream. Prof. Chinchu states it becomes impossible then to predict how an eligibility requirement like this would serve the purpose of introducing the right students into the new programme.

The Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) and the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) continue to issue overlapping and sometimes contradictory notifications on who regulates what. This tug-of-war has left students and educators unsure of the academic pathways that will count in the future.

The RCI recently introduced a new MA in Clinical Psychology to eventually replace the M.Phil., while around the same time, the NCAHP released its own set of competency-based guidelines. Yet neither body has clearly defined who has the final authority over training standards or licensure.

In effect, the profession is attempting reform without first resolving who is empowered to decide its direction, cautions Jamuna Rajeswaran, Head of Clinical Psychology Department at NIMHANS, Bengaluru, highlighting the governance vacuum that is widening and leaving Psychology students navigating an unstable and often contradictory regulatory landscape.

The real issue lies in the regulatory space itself, which remains unclear long before questions of eligibility or curriculum revision even arise. “Students are perplexed,” says Prof. Rajeswaran. “Notices keep coming, and as heads of departments, we are telling them just to hold on. The parallel interventions of the RCI and the NCAHP have created a very, very fluid state where nobody can make a decision”, she notes.

She also questions the feasibility of the new competency-based B.Psy curriculum and the efforts to standardise the profession without adequate capacity for the newer specialised courses that are being proposed.

India does not have enough trained faculty in Forensic Psychology, Behavioural Medicine, Neuropsychology or Clinical Assessment to teach these modules at scale. “We don't have enough people to teach the subject,” she said. “Not all hospitals even have psychiatry departments. How will students get hands-on training?” The concern, she added, is that poorly trained graduates may drift into counselling roles without supervised clinical exposure. “We are handling human beings. Unless you are trained in ethical issues, whether it is forensic cases, neuropsychology, marital therapy or head injury assessments, you should not be practising.”

For many in the field, the deeper anxiety goes beyond NEET or eligibility rules: it is the fear that Psychology is losing its footing as an art. Prof. Rajeswaran argues the push toward standardisation and medical-style competencies is “watering it down” and stripping the discipline of its interpretive backbone. “Psychodynamic thinking, ethical discernment, and the slow maturing that comes with supervised practice are lost,” she says, when high-level regulatory discussions are reduced to debates on nomenclature and course labels under the RCI.

Prof. Chinchu echoes this concern: “Psychology has always been a hybrid – part art, part science. If admissions and training become biology-heavy, we lose that hybrid identity.” He warns India risks losing its “critical, post-colonial, interpretive traditions” if the field is pulled wholly into a medicalised framework. At the school level, Ms. Alex points to how this erosion began much earlier. During COVID, NCERT deleted foundational chapters, Biological Bases of Behaviour, Cognitive Processes, the brain and nervous system, to ease workload, but “these chapters were never restored,” she notes. The result is a generation learning Psychology “without the scientific basis of human behaviour,” and without opportunities for reflective engagement.

(Zoe is a recent graduate of the Public Policy programme at the NLSIU in Bengaluru.)

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Published - December 05, 2025 04:35 pm IST

psychology / education

Source: The Hindu
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