Mashood Ahmad
There was a time when tuition was only meant for weaker students. Only those students who were weak in certain subjects took tuition classes. However, gone are those days.
With the increasing difficulty in the level of competitive exams and the cut-throat competition in every field, coaching institutes have become an important aspect of today’s education system. Hardly any student can think of getting selected for a competitive exam without attending a coaching institute. These institutes provide the necessary guidance to the students and the training that is needed to qualify a particular exam, but the exponential increase of these institutes, mushrooming in almost every corner of any town or city has now become a problem for the same students whom it caters to.
An ‘industry’ that focuses more on its profit than the well-being of students is seen emerging. With time and the growing attendance of students in these institutes, the effects are also seen in the usage of language– the terminology has also changed. From the journey of tuition centers to coaching institutes or academics, an individual student has now become merely a ‘product’, in the hands of the coaching institutes.
Some coaching institutes admit hundreds of students in single classrooms, whereas the recommended student-to-teacher ratio stands to be 30:1. Admitting such a huge number of students into one classroom leads to denial of the personal attention towards a student at a time when most of the students leave their homes to attend coaching institutes.
THE PROBLEM OF OVERCROWDING
“Overcrowding in the classes directly affects the efficacy of education and the health of students. The coaching centers now run more on fame than on quality, they have nothing to do with education. Coaching centers are the instruments of providing secondary support to the teaching-learning processes of school education but due to the money involved, these coaching centers have become money minting machines. Although some coaching centers are dedicated to providing quality education the numbers are meager,” said Suhail Ahmad a lecturer by profession.
“In today’s world of crisis and distractions, where it becomes difficult for students to properly manage time and focus on their future, with weak school education, ill management of teaching resources, poor infrastructure, and administration in schools, coaching centers have become a ‘necessary evil’,” Suhail maintains.
Another lecturer Hilal Ahmad Rather said that the coaching centers in Kashmir function unregulated, and when the only motive for coaching institutes remains money. It gives them a free hand to do whatever fits their interests.
“‘Coaching centers can not be an alternative to School education,” he told The Kashmiriyat.
Afshana (name changed) pursuing Honors in English Literature, who has once been a student of these institutes said that it becomes difficult for students to communicate with the teachers in an overcrowded space like coaching institutes. On being asked how attending a coaching institute impacted her or her journey in life, she said that it has made her overcome the fear of the crowd.
PROBLEMS FACED BY POOR STUDENTS
Coaching Centers nowadays charge hefty amount of fees which creates inequality in the field of education. Only students from economically well-off families can get admission to these institutes, and students with low-income backgrounds are forced either to pay huge sums of money or get satisfied with the low level of educational training, that a competitive exam needs.
Despite having some provisions in place for economically backward students, this does not seem to help much; as students need to leave their homes and pay rent for their accommodations and in some cases fare for their travel or both.
In the year 2020, political parties in Tamil Nadu have been vocal in their opposition to the national-level medical examination NEET.
Following the suicide of a young girl named Anitha in Ariyalur district several protests had been held last year, the most vocal being the political party DMK which had led several agitations against the test. It had alleged that NEET does not allow for students from socio-economically backward backgrounds to have an equal chance at getting a medical seat. The economically well-off students join coaching institutes and have an advantage of extra edge, while the students from lower economic backgrounds who can not afford such hefty tuition fees lag in certain respects from those who attend coaching institutes. This results in the build-up of stress on poor students and leads to such horrible incidents while pushing the students from economically backward backgrounds further down the socio-economic ladder.
A huge amount of money is being spent on government schools; for the year 2022-23 India’s budget for school education stands to be ₹63,449 Crores from which ₹11,832 crore is being spent on Jammu Kashmir alone. With such a huge amount of budget and despite having highly qualified teachers government schools are not able to produce any results. What is the reason?
POOR MANAGEMENT OF TEACHING RESOURCES
The Principals, CEOs, Directors, and other officials related to the education field, who are not experts in this field, are not able to utilize the resources available in the form of teachers. “That is why when the same teachers go to coaching institutes they can perform well, fault doesn’t lie with teachers but with the poor management of teachers,” Majid Ahmad (name changed) a high school level teacher with 32 years of experience in the education field said.
“There is a nexus between the higher secondaries and coaching institutes; higher secondaries allow students to be absent from schools indefinitely, which allows students to attend coaching institutes without any disturbance and helps to improve their students’ results without any real work, on the other hand coaching institutes get what they need; students in abundance, which means money,” Majid said.
“The coaching institute industry is built on a false plinth buttressed by the things like ‘dummy admissions’,” he further added.
STRESS AND BURDEN ON STUDENTS
Rehan (name changed), an 18-year-old medical student attends both coaching as well as school. He starts his day at 7 in the morning by attending coaching first and then school and then back to coaching up to 7 in the evening.
“It becomes difficult for one to attend both school and coaching institute. I feel burned out and tired all the time and it results in a lack of interest in studies and low performance,” Rehan told The Kashmiriyat.
Most of the students take ‘dummy admissions’ in schools but there are also students who attend both coaching institutes and schools as well. “Students who attend both coaching institutes and schools face a lot of problems, it becomes very difficult to cope with the pressure of workload and stress from both sides,” Taha Nadeem, a medical student of DPS Budgam said.
On being asked how attending a coaching institute impacted him, Taha said that it had impacted him a lot, and that it had affected his life adversely; time management and stress from the workload from both school and the coaching institute become a problem. Every student attending coaching and school can relate. “In this condition, one starts to doubt oneself whether I am going on the right path. A student loses himself in this stressful atmosphere,” Taha said.
“I think one should focus on one thing at a time, but today’s parents do not understand this thing that the stress and pressure from both sides affect students adversely and the results are not good, you know. Students are tense all the time and this results in low performance in academics,” he added.
Last year, a video in which a teacher was slapping a student indefinitely in front of the whole class went viral on social media. The video gave rise to much hue and cry.
Namood e Saher, a medical student who once attended one of the valley’s premiere and famed institutes said that the coaching centers also abuse the students mentally. “One teacher checked our mobile phones and we were forced to trim our nails and one teacher beat a female student with a stick in front of the whole class and she left the institute,” he said.
THE GAME OF TOPPERS
Coaching institutes take their entrance examinations by which they analyze and earmark the students who will top a particular examination and accordingly shift their focus on that particular student– the reason being, that these topper students fetch them the much-needed publicity. Then come the big hoardings and front-page newspaper ads with photographs of these students, then these hoardings of toppers are used as bait to get students enrolled. Students join coaching institutes under peer pressure, Hilal said, while adding that the mass media publicity of the results which hardly comes via coaching centers plays a vital role in why the students join the coaching institutes while being well aware of the issue of overcrowding.
TESTIMONIALS
On being asked whether the coaching institutes helped students, we received mixed responses:
One student wishing anonymity said coaching institutes help students in guiding them toward their goals, while Ali Nawaz, a nonmedical student of class 11th said he does not think so. “I wanted to appear in JEE. I thought coaching might help but after some consideration, I realised it was a huge mistake,” Ali said.
When asked to describe the atmosphere of the coaching institutes they attend, Ali said that the atmosphere inside his coaching institute was adverse. Students were compared to each other. “In my case, it was very negative. Teachers consistently said that out of all of you only 3 students will make it others are just paying for those 3,” he said.
Namood e Saher on being asked, if she was satisfied with the quality of teaching at the institute she attended, responds with a blunt no.
I was not able to understand physics class. In fact most of the students did not get what the teacher was teaching, she said. Namood e Saher also said, “We wrote an application to change the teacher. The coordinator tore it in front of us saying ‘we bring best teachers for you from outside valley and you don’t get what he teaches’.”
Teachers asked us to sleep if we were not able to understand. Next year I changed my coaching institute, she said.
While commenting on why students of government schools leave their schools despite having highly qualified teachers at their disposal, Mohammad Ameen, a lecturer by profession said, “No doubt the government schools have qualified staff but the education is given secondary importance by the higher ups. A teacher has become a scapegoat at the hands of the authorities and they are bound to do these activities.”
The coaching institute industry has now become a market where students are deceived, hunted, and poached.
Government, parents, teachers, and educationists should take necessary measures to stop this profit-making industry from taking the gruesome and monstrous forms like ‘Kota-factory’. “It’s being seen as a status symbol among families to send their wards to coaching institutes,” Hilal said while commenting on coaching institutes.
“One should focus only on one thing at a time, this gives a direction. One should either attend only coaching institutes or a school alone’,” Taha adds.
Parents should not force students to choose subjects blindly when they do not have the aptitude for a particular subject. They should also not compare their wards with other students who have for example chosen medical or non-medical subjects. “Coaching institutes should be regulated. A proper student-to-teacher ratio should be maintained, I think this is the solution,” adds Mohammad Ameen.