Representative image showing students.
Credit: iStock Photo
The Comprehensive Modular Survey (CMS) on Education, conducted by the government early this year, reveals some unhealthy trends in India’s schooling system. It shows that about 27 per cent of India’s school-going children had private coaching in the current academic year – 30.7 per cent in urban areas and 25.5 per cent in rural areas.
In classes 11 and 12, 37 per cent of the students take private classes. Urban households spend about Rs 4,000 a year on coaching. The spending in rural areas is lower but significant. It rises to Rs 10,000 for higher-secondary students. These numbers indicate a parallel education system. While they reflect the anxiety of parents about their children’s education, they also reveal a lack of confidence in the mainstream schooling system. Competition and peer pressure are also factors that drive students to tuition centres.
Private coaching, aimed at helping children overcome their academic challenges, are also known to mount pressure on them. School hours followed by private classes and homework can make a punishing schedule, leaving little time to relax or play. A healthy balance can be ensured by improving the trust in mainstream education, thereby reducing the dependence on external coaching.
The survey shows a declining trend in State school enrolment, falling from about 74 per cent in the 1970s to 51-56 per cent today. But CMS 2025 also underlines the significance of State-run schools in terms of expenditure – while the average annual cost of educating a child in a private school is Rs 25,000, it is Rs 2,863 in State schools. Government schools have lost out to private institutions in most parts of the country, except in states such as Kerala, and Delhi, where efforts were made in the last few years to improve the standards in government schools. The irony is that even after paying high fees in private schools, parents send children to private classes. The fall in enrolment in State-run schools is worrisome and warrants renewed focus and investment.
Apart from tuition centres that have come up across the country and private coaching at homes, bigger institutes offering targeted coaching for professional courses to thousands of students in hubs such as Kota, in Rajasthan, have come to symbolise the boom. Functioning of some of these centres has come under the scanner for the stress the schedules and expectations cause to the students, even leading some of them to suicide. Regulatory oversight has not been effective. There could be a solution in strengthening the school system, by realigning goals and methods towards wholesome and more personalised learning.