Md. Aminul Islam (RA) & Mehzabin Rahman (JRF)
Advanced IBT Hub
Bimala Prasad Chaliha College, Nagarbera, 781127
Since a decade or more, we have seen that students and their parents keep their faith on private coaching compared to formal education system of colleges and schools. Earlier, private coaching was used as an alternate system to acquire the knowledge for competitive exam. However, now-a-days coaching classes have become a mainstream, or you can say unavoidable part of the education system in India. The present education system raises so many questions like- is private coaching system being necessary or it’s just a trend in India, does it indicate the failure of our education system? How does it impact on our education system?
Presently we have observed that coaching classes have not only ended up in becoming necessity but has rather become a compulsion for the students. This seems to be more problematic for the present and the future education. Although it has helped to crake the competitive exams for professional sectors, somehow it seems to have degraded the education system of schools and colleges. Teachers are also not interested in taking classes in schools and colleges as most of them are engaged in some coaching institutes. Therefore, the quality of education is dripping gradually in public education system. Mrs. Rekha Nalawade, a high school teacher of Marathi at SVPT, Thane, said “Students do not pay utmost attention in classes when we teach them. This is because they have already learnt it in their coaching classes and presume that they have a lot of knowledge on that subject. This lowers our motivation to perform our best. But when questioned, they usually fail to be up to the mark.”
A survey conducted by Stanford University showed that coaching improves retention and graduation rates among college students. However, impact of coaching on our education system, where the brilliancy of a student is measured on the basis of marks and grades he/she secures but not through innovative ideas and creativity, will remain questionable. Moreover, students from the science stream acquire little practical knowledge by coaching classes because they give more emphasis on theoretical knowledge. These coaching institutes give short cut methods for mugging up of things rather than clearing concept which can be helpful for competitive exams. But for higher studies, conceptual clarity is more important. Repeating the same thing over and over again and simply hammering the matter into a student’s head would not raise the standard of education. In our opinion, the system needs to be changed in a way where a student’s innovative and creative ideas get more weightage than his/her scorecard right from the very beginning of school education.
