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Coaching and tuitions killing creativity and building pressure
The shadow education system of coaching and tuitions is causing student suicides, killing their creativity, building pressure on students, leaving them guilt ridden in case of rejection.
Every year millions of students are asked to follow the blind practice of attending tuitions, but to find a better future, students have to face a bitter present. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, around 7.1 crore Indian students attend some form of private coaching and 10 to 11 per cent of a family’s budget is eaten up by such tuitions. The private coaching industry is bigger than $ 40 billion, which is about the state GDP of Odisha.
And Kota stands as the leader of this huge yet shadow education system. The $ 45-million dollar coaching industry in the city has led to the suicide of 57 young people in the last 5 years with seven students just this year.
According to a research, coaching in a Kota centre could well begin when the child is 13 years old. The child, thus, would never attend a regular school with playgrounds, or read poems in a class, or be around caring teachers who aim at his/her holistic development. She/He will only focus on attending IIT/medical college preparation classes. Coaching institutes are a well paved way for killing creativity in a child even before it blooms.
Where India’s average per capita annual income stands at about Rs 86,000, the two-year cost (including tuition and living expenses) for parents could be around Rs 6 lakh. With parents spending such huge amounts on their children, some of them include who cannot afford the amount yet take loans, students are put under tremendous pressure to study or else the money spent would be a waste; acceptance rates as low as 0.005 per cent (for IITs) leaves the unsuccessful students dejected and guilt-ridden — a huge emotional and psychological cost.
At this point, we need to ask ourselves a few questions like – is there a benefit which justifies this enormous cost? Does coaching add value to human capital, or is it merely a signalling device? If it adds value then the governments must encourage them. But if it’s the latter, alternative means of signalling must be developed given the horrifying social cost that the ill practice brings with it.
Pratham conducted a two-year randomised control trial which indicated that private tutoring in school (grade 3 or 4) did benefit students in mastering basic skills. Yet there is no systematic evidence which reveals that coaching for entrance examinations to colleges leads to any significant increase in productivity. With a high number of applicants in India, every year many such applicants are brutally cast aside.
A World Bank publication (Dang and Rogers, 2008) theoretically explained that coaching institutions are not likely to add value to human capital and are only meant for signalling, which is what entrance tests measure; tuitions or coaching, therefore, aren't likely to increase students’ human capital any more than self-practice does. Signalling efforts, in fact, come at the price of human capital — in Kota, formal education for the IIT/medical college aspirant is offered in dummy schools which lack all – round education.
Countries have varying policy responses to private coaching: It is banned in Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, regulated in Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, Ukraine, ignored in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, UK, Canada, or encouraged in Singapore, South Africa, Tanzania. Banning failed either due to weak implementation (Myanmar, Cambodia) or because of powerful interest groups (Korea). Banning doesn’t make sense in India too. At one place where banning doesn't make sense in India, the usefulness of regulation becomes weak as India has frail enforcement infrastructure and a highly inflexible demand for coaching.
To get rid of this evil system, alternative signalling mechanisms must be explored and considered. Many elite universities around the globe often select students on the basis of their overall intelligence and performance in schools. For many universities, exams don’t determine their selection and might act as a process to eliminate non-serious applicants. Selection occurs through a meticulous process of considering several factors like grades, recommendations, interviews, motivation, extra-curricular activities, etc. This involves students to attend regular schools engaging with peers, history, art, poetry, science, mathematics, debating and basketball. If such alternative systems are considered, there is little that coaching institutions can do to terminate creativity of children. The other option is for coaching instituted to turn themselves into good schools, which reminds us that we do need more good schools.
Let's not hand our generations into the pitfall of death, they deserve to breathe under the sun, play with water and groom as a healthy human being.
Image used for representational purpose only