Tuition Boom in India

Marks, marks and more marks! What was your score in mathematics, English and the sciences? These questions from parents, teachers, and later on from employers are driving millions of Indian students into private tuition classes after school.

Shiladitya Bhaduri, a class ten student studying in an elite private school in Kolkata also attends tuition classes instead of playing with his friends. "For a bright future, private tuitions are needed because schools are not always guiding us in the right way", he explains.

Sharmistha, a private tutor in Kolkata, agrees: "It is impossible for the teachers to give all the required knowledge that they want to impart in the school; so the students simply require some special care in order to know all that they need to know. "

Fierce competition

Besides teaching deficits in the government and even private schools, it is mainly the tough competition for popular careers like those of a doctor, an engineer or a civil servant which makes parents and students go for coaching centres. Utpal Moitra wants his son to be a government officer, a dream that many Indian parents have for their children.

"I want him to be a civil servant but I don’t really know whether he will be able to do it or not," says Moitra. "If I get some good institution which can give him the coaching to get him into a good position, I don’t mind sending him to a coaching centre."

Specialized tutorial institutes for the different professions advertise everywhere. Some students spend years in the hostels of these tutorial homes hoping to gain entry to their dream profession.

"Quantity education"

Saswati Goswami, who teaches at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi, believes that a fundamental problem with the Indian education system is behind the tuition craze:

"It is not quality education but more about quantity education", she says. "How many marks you score decides your future prospects. In order to make sure that knowledge becomes more important in education than marks, you'd have to introduce a system where your knowledge is tested. So you don’t just have to memorise something, you have to internalise something. You have to read the book and the teacher has to guide you through the whole course, which is not done."

Coaching centres are a lucrative business as they hardly pay any taxes. Some Indian states have even put a ban on full time teachers running private tuition classes, as this might impact their performance in school. In order to secure an additional income, teachers have also been known to teach only part of the curriculum in class and then request the students to come for private tuition for the rest. So far, government orders have not proven effective in stopping such practices; and as long as fierce competition and the craze for better marks continue to put pressure on both parents and children, the tuition boom is likely to continue.

Author: Debarati Mukherjee
Editor: Grahame Lucas