City and the culture of tuition centres

The road to reach a prestigious college is now not about reading and assimilating information from your textbooks but by learning by heart your tuition centre notes.

The tuition centre fad has spread all over the city and has made every student a “victim” of the same. The co-curricular activities timing has been swapped and replaced with coaching classes to help climb the competitive ladder.

Blame it on the growing competition, lack of teaching standards at schools or on a truckload of syllabus to complete, the tuition trend is catching on fast, and how! Parents have started engaging their children into various subject tuitions from an early age so that their child has an academic, competitive edge over others.

The students are buzzing in and out of tuition centres in their quest to win the rat race, irrespective of the hefty fees charged by these teaching shops with flourishing business.

“I go to tuition centres for studying various subjects because I’m not able to keep up with the pace of studies at my school,” says Diksha Sharma, a commerce student enrolled at Vinay Commerce Academy. She tells Metrolife, “It’s also about the cut-offs soaring high every year that I need to attend extra tuition classes to get in a good commerce college.”

Amien Narang, a student of Jesus and Mary College pursuing BCom (Honours) says, “During school days, I personally wasn’t able to concentrate on studies at home, so that made me join tuitions. Other than that, the humorous and motivating nature of my tutors relieved me from all the tension and added regularity to my study routine. They actually recognised my strengths and weaknesses and made me work accordingly.”

Not only this, the demand of private tutors is also increasing day by day. They believe private tutors are more qualified and can give the much-needed attention to the academically weak students or make the good students brilliant. However, one can still come across school teachers who are against the ‘tuition centre culture’ and are
always ready to help their students, clearing their doubts and addressing
their weaknesses.

Ashish Singh, a school teacher says, “I have always encouraged my students to sit in for extra hours at school and clear all their doubts rather than engaging in extra tuition classes.”

 “The basic reason why students opt for tuitions is to get “attention”. In schools the number of students are more than what a teacher can handle,” Anita Sharma, formerly a teacher at Bal Bharti School and now a tuition teacher tells Metrolife. She adds, “Students come for tuitions to get proper attention which helps them to cope with studies and
learn better.”

Another problem encouraging the growth of tuition culture is the inadequate remuneration received by school teachers, which in turn makes their attitude more casual towards the school students, making them opt for tuition centers as the secondary source of income. The government has also started barring school teachers from take
tuitions but that has not yielded any better result, says another teacher requesting anonymity.

 Anisha Soni, mother of a Class 12 student says, “It’s important to get enrolled in tuition centres to get a good percentile and also for the preparation of entrance exams. The competition is increasing day by day.”

 Whether this trend points towards the failure of the education system, the cut-throat competition amongst students or lack of good education provided by the schools and teachers –the harsh reality is that these teaching shops are here to stay. Making students less dependent on their services would require nothing less than a complete overhaul of the education system.