In a significant move, the Ministry of Education last month announced several guidelines for coaching centres. This comes in response to concerns about the welfare of students, student suicides and the unregulated growth of private coaching.
The coaching industry generates a revenue of Rs 6,000 crore annually and is growing at the rate of 7-10 per cent every year. There is now coaching not only for NEET or JEE, but even for CUET, as well as tuitions across subjects taught in schools. A new malaise has crept in where children are moving out of schools after Class X in order to join dummy schools which admit them without requiring them to attend classes, so they can enrol in coaching centres to crack CUET.
This is resulting in those who have opted for science dismissing the value of school. The government needs to reconsider its earlier decision to give weightage to board exam results in applying for competitive exams. If not, we will lose the franchise of high school education completely.
Unfortunately, policy makers have not been able to provide support to students for the journey beyond school. This has allowed institutions like Kota to become parallel systems. Coaching centres, such as those in Kota, have been established over three decades and are firmly entrenched in the lives and minds of Indians.
The National Education Policy goes beyond textbooks and lays emphasis on mental health, learning and understanding. It focuses on a child’s inner needs. Only a school can develop these concepts.
Children are walking away from classroom teaching into coaching centres, often with parental support. A child in senior and high school needs to be counselled to prevent him or her from succumbing to peer pressure. This is a mandate for both parents and schools. If coaching centres are going to be the foundation of these years, then the youth of today will become directionless.
The teenage brain is vulnerable, affecting long-term personality development. Young adults need a lot of downtime through sleep, social interaction, reflection, developing their identities and articulating their needs. These aspects are not addressed in the coaching culture. In fact, coaching centres do not even give enough time to sleep. Children are not machines — they need communities that are nurturing, supportive, sometimes challenging but always caring.
We can’t measure mental health only by the number of suicides. There are many acute and chronic conditions which are unseen. Children suffer from anxiety and are unable to cope. The teenage brain is vulnerable, affecting long-term personality development. Young adults need a lot of downtime through sleep, social interaction, reflection, developing their identities and articulating their needs.
These aspects are not addressed in the coaching culture. In fact, coaching centres do not even give enough time to sleep. Children are not machines — they need communities that are nurturing, supportive, sometimes challenging but always caring.
The role of education, defines and redefines itself, particularly in our country, which is socially and economically diverse, where deprived sections are increasingly going to demand their place under the sun by asserting their own identities and aspirations. This feeds into a highly competitive environment, which has reduced learning to tuition shops, thus affecting the emotional stability and well-being of our children.
Learning is a process, where society reflects upon the needs and aspirations of its children. True education is value imparting and goal setting. If the child finds that the idiom he speaks is at variance with the idiom of society, he faces a dilemma. Children are natural actors. They instinctively use pretend play in order to make sense of the world. They imitate words and actions, observe and respond to the environment, create situations and assume roles. They interact with peers and arrange space and objects to bring their stories to life. They direct one another to respond to each other’s dramas. They observe and internalise the needs of the society around them through which a world of false expectations is created, which leads to stress.
We need to engage, discuss, clarify, and care for the aspirations of our young. As a country, we need a shared vision, where well-being is the goal of education and co-agency is a guiding light.
Students go to school to become purposeful, reflective, and responsible. Agency helps children to act independently and make their own choices. For life to work, our young will need to innovate, be responsible and sensitive, become creators of products, services and models for the future, alert to the claims that others make on them and open to the deepest emotions.
The obsession with coaching will never be able to validate and strengthen new ideas, approaches and research, required for human flourishing. Prioritising these is the need of the hour.
The writer is chairperson and executive director, Education, Innovations and Training, DLF Schools and Scholarship Programmes
Children are not machines — they need communities that are nurturing, supportive, sometimes challenging but always caring
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13
12.02.2024
In a significant move, the Ministry of Education last month announced several guidelines for coaching centres. This comes in response to concerns about the welfare of students, student suicides and the unregulated growth of private coaching.
The coaching industry generates a revenue of Rs 6,000 crore annually and is growing at the rate of 7-10 per cent every year. There is now coaching not only for NEET or JEE, but even for CUET, as well as tuitions across subjects taught in schools. A new malaise has crept in where children are moving out of schools after Class X in order to join dummy schools which admit them without requiring them to attend classes, so they can enrol in coaching centres to crack CUET.
This is resulting in those who have opted for science dismissing the value of school. The government needs to reconsider its earlier decision to give weightage to board exam results in applying for competitive exams. If not, we will lose the franchise of high school education completely.
Unfortunately, policy makers have not been able to provide support to students for the journey beyond school. This has allowed institutions like Kota to become parallel systems. Coaching centres, such as those in Kota, have been established over three........
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