An important feature of the Third Five-Year Plan was:

Concept

Educational features of a five-year plan are the concrete policies and institutional measures introduced or expanded during that plan period.

For higher education, the relevant test is whether a measure formed part of the period’s documented expansion, quality improvement, or examination-reform programme.

Application

The Third Five-Year Plan covered 1961–66. During its first year, the University Grants Commission funded plan projects that included reform of the examination system.

Within that reform effort, examination research units were established in some universities to study and improve assessment practices. Therefore, the offered feature is setting up examination research units in some universities.

Contrast

• Abolition of the Education Commission does not fit the period: the Education Commission was constituted in 1964, toward the end of the Third Plan, rather than abolished as a plan feature.

• Reduction in the number of colleges conflicts with the plan-period expansion of university and college facilities.

• Setting up examination research units in some universities belongs to the documented examination-reform programme.

• Greater emphasis on open-book examinations was not the identified institutional measure of the Third Plan.

Cross-check

The period evidence separately records examination-system reform, while the other choices describe abolition, contraction, or a specific exam format rather than the institutional research measure.

Result

The verified feature is setting up examination research units in some universities.