If you plan to appear for entrance exams like JEE Main, NEET, CAT, and NIFT, or any entrance exam worth its salt, there is a chance that you may be tempted to take up coaching.
This is often driven by peer pressure and also previous years’ topper results. After all there is no denying the fact that many toppers emerge from the coaching institutes.
But while coaching institutes can help students in some respects, is self study completely useless? Can’t a student by dint of their labour and mental aptitude crack these exams, or even top them? And what exactly is the difference between coaching and self-study?
The sad reality is, today, many students, even the meritorious ones, don’t believe in their abilities to crack these exams on their own. So, they end up taking coaching.
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Table of Contents
How good are the coaching institutes
Coaching institutes come in all hues. Some coaching institutes have a better record than others, but can also be expensive. Also, each centre may have different standards, even if they are from the same institute.
For instance, the teaching faculty will vary across centers. And some of these faculty members can be good while others may not be equally good. So, when choosing a coaching institute, you also need to be particular about the center.
Institutes like Aakash, Allen, FIITJEE, Career Point, Topper Academy, Resonance, Super 30, Bansal Classes, Vidyamandir, etc., rank among the best coaching institutes in the country.
These institutes have become such huge brands that they exert tremendous influence on the student community and the academic ecosystem of the country as a whole. Their influence can be felt the most when results of top entrance exams are declared – JEE Main, JEE Advanced, NEET, CAT, etc.
The toppers, many from these institutes, can be found giving interviews to media channels and speaking in glowing terms how a coaching institute helped them crack the entrance exam. The coaching institutes in turn use these bites for further promotion of their brand.
This is how the coaching institutes thrive!
Why can’t our educational institutes create toppers?
The so-called pillars of our education system – schools and colleges – are the places where the toppers should have originally emerged.
But as we all know most of our schools and colleges have turned into job-generation sectors, employing scores of teachers and administrations. The express purpose of public schools and colleges today seems to be creating lucrative jobs for people.
Sadly, a lot of these people who get the jobs are only interested in clinging on to these jobs with little output in return. So, we see a lot of pot-bellied, unfit people managing the business of running a school.
The government is also doing precious little to improve the standard of schools and colleges. While the top ranked colleges and schools are doing a bit better, even students from these institutes can’t seem to manage without coaching.
The state of affairs in the country is so bad that CBSE recently had to come out with an advisory against dummy schools!
The dummy schools concept has cropped up because these students no longer want to attend a regular school. If you ask why, the answer is most schools are ill equipped to prepare students for entrance exams. So, these students who are preparing for entrance exams get admission to a dummy school, where they don’t have to attend school at all. This allows them to focus entirely on exam preparation.
What is the government doing to improve the condition of schools and colleges?
Nothing of substance!
While our PM is doing pariksha pe charcha and taking other initiatives, concrete measures are missing.
Still many parents think twice about admitting their wards to government schools and colleges, despite the fact that educators in these institutes get far better salary and facilities than private institutes.
Where is the accountability?
Accountability that these educators have towards the students and parents. It is where the government could have laid down a few guidelines.
We are not talking about drastic measures, but at least START with some baby steps. To bring accountability.
The icing on the cake is the Delhi government typing up with Physics Wallah (PW) to provide free coaching to Class 12 students preparing for NEET and CUET. The initiative will surely benefit the students.
But is it the correct solution? Why did the Delhi government fall at the mercy of a private institute like Physics Wallah. What happened to the scores of government teachers and academicians retained on Delhi government salary?
Aren’t they good enough? If they are not good enough, what is the reason?
Also, if they aren’t good enough, why are they retained on government salary?
Sadly, nobody is asking these questions.
Short-time solutions will make things worse
Measures like tie-ups with private institutes like Physics Wallah show that there are serious shortcomings in the education system.
Also, these short-term measures can only make matters worse.
For one, it will ensure there is no improvement in the status quo. Second, the measure will encourage more institutes like Physics Wallah while sidelining government colleges and schools.
But with the sanction of state governments, private organizations like Physics Walla will get even more powerful.
