“Earlier, citing data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on student suicides, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said, “According to NCRB, around 13,000 students died by suicide in 2021. Maharashtra recorded the maximum number of suicides at 1,834, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 1,308, Tamil Nadu at 1,246, Karnataka at 855 and Odisha at 834. This is a problem which could be solved only through a collective effort.”
The above is extracted from the article Kota: District administration stays tests, coaching exams for 2 months after NEET aspirant kills self, published in Organiser of 28th August, 2023.
Such and many similar articles and reports are revealing the menace that the coaching centre industry in India has become. Viewed deeply and analytically, it has become a net drain on national resources. It has distorted the already incongruous educational system foisted on the country during India’s colonial period in early 19th century by the Britisher Macaulay. All coaching centres in India should be blanket banned. Here are seven reasons why.
1. They do not serve the professed basic purpose of coaching for competitive examinations—selection of best applicants or aspirants. Best students will be selected even if there were no coaching centres. In fact in the absence of coaching centres selection of the best students will be more genuine because it will be based on their self study and raw talent.
2. Coaching centres are partly the product of a non uniform pattern of education in the country in which different syllabi and text material are prescribed for different states. This is because of a wrong education policy which needs drastic and immediate correction.
3. Coaching centres are a huge drain on the monetary resources of economically middle and lower class families who have to educate their children for professional streams.The huge expenditure often breaks the back of poor families who have to run this rate race.
4. Limited number of seats in professional institutions ( engineering, medical or other) and a burgeoning student population makes the competition tougher and tougher each year. This stresses the young aspirants physically and mentally. Many of them , unfortunately, failing to cope with this enormous stress, end their precious lives.
5. Current market revenue of the coaching industry in India is Rs 58,088 crore, according to The Infinium Global Research, a consultancy firm based in Pune. The coaching industry’s growth is projected to reach Rs 1,33,995 crore by 2028. This is a colossal wastage because this industry is providing no net value addition to our student community and the society at large. In fact, the contribution is net negative when we assess the negative value of stress, suicides, unhealthy completion and adverse effects on the formal educational institutions.
6. As mentioned above, we have to gauge the adverse effect of coaching centres on the established , formal schools and educational institutions. They suffer because many of their regular teachers neglect their jobs and perform part time private tuitions which groom the students to make them coaching centre ready.
7. Imagine how much the productive, creative and innovative developmental sectors of our economy would flourish if only the coaching centres were banned and , obviously, the aforementioned thousands of crores of rupees would find way into real developmental work.
Putting a blanket ban on coaching institutes will be beneficial in multiple ways as brought out above. It should be done promptly and through a constitutional mechanism. It should have fool proof legal framework so that it can be implemented without ambiguities and without any scope for the educational mafia elements challenging it. Coaching centres go against the very ethos of education which , in fundamental terms, cannot and should not be commercialized.
