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By Rajkamal Rao
As the long hot summer vacation draws down in India, another fatigue is about to set in - the absolute frenzy of children and parents to sign up for private tuition classes.
These classes are sometimes longer than the regular school calendar. They are not remedial classes - the kind you take in the US after school to bolster your understanding in a topic or two. These are meant for everyone - and the peer pressure is so high that no right-minded student or parent can avoid them. Even parents who could arguably teach these subjects at home shrug in a resigned manner. "We don't have the time or the patience to do this day in and out. By outsourcing to a 'professional provider', we can stay assured that the kids go through the drills needed to be competitive", said one parent we spoke to.
A girl we know who just passed her 10th grade scoring an impressive 85% on her ICSE boards got into the famous Mount Carmel College in Bangalore last week. As she came out of the principal's offices holding her approved admissions offer, she bore left to meet up with multiple tables which were signing students up for private tuition classes for the 11th grade. She signed up with a provider paying INR 38,000 for a year of coaching.
Classes run from 4 PM to 8 PM each day, including Saturdays - and start next week, before college officially starts. All 40 seats that the provider was selling were gone before the end of the day.
The instruction in these tuition classes is geared towards one goal - doing well in the final exams - with little emphasis on learning. "Practice makes you perfect" appears to be the slogan that every cram school adheres to. The topics for an entire school year are "taught" between the months of June and October. Classes during the remaining term (November to March) are devoted to what this cottage industry calls "Revision of Portions". That is, students are made to practice the same content over and over again; repeating answers over and over again; and solving question papers over and over again. The idea is that if you do this for four full months, no final exam question is likely to slip through the cracks.
Most instructors in these classes have regular day jobs - of teaching the same classes in the schools and colleges that employ them. Why these teachers need to be paid double for the same job - and why parents need to pay double for the same services completely beats us.
The system is highly unregulated. Superlatives - as in Brilliant Tutorials, Excellent Tutorials - don billboards everywhere. Some signs are pasted on trees and on residential housing gates with the name of the coaching provider, the classes of instruction and the ubiquitous mobile number all in small font. After all how much information can you squeeze on to a tree?
Cram schools are unfortunately not just the disease in India, they are reported to be the case in other Asian countries as well, including China, Taiwan and South Korea. Here's an excellent, but shocking, article about the practice in South Korea as reported in Time magazine. Everything in the article applies to the Indian context except that there is no regulation in India at all. So, the situation is many times worse.
By Rajkamal Rao
As the long hot summer vacation draws down in India, another fatigue is about to set in - the absolute frenzy of children and parents to sign up for private tuition classes.
These classes are sometimes longer than the regular school calendar. They are not remedial classes - the kind you take in the US after school to bolster your understanding in a topic or two. These are meant for everyone - and the peer pressure is so high that no right-minded student or parent can avoid them. Even parents who could arguably teach these subjects at home shrug in a resigned manner. "We don't have the time or the patience to do this day in and out. By outsourcing to a 'professional provider', we can stay assured that the kids go through the drills needed to be competitive", said one parent we spoke to.
A girl we know who just passed her 10th grade scoring an impressive 85% on her ICSE boards got into the famous Mount Carmel College in Bangalore last week. As she came out of the principal's offices holding her approved admissions offer, she bore left to meet up with multiple tables which were signing students up for private tuition classes for the 11th grade. She signed up with a provider paying INR 38,000 for a year of coaching.
Classes run from 4 PM to 8 PM each day, including Saturdays - and start next week, before college officially starts. All 40 seats that the provider was selling were gone before the end of the day.
The instruction in these tuition classes is geared towards one goal - doing well in the final exams - with little emphasis on learning. "Practice makes you perfect" appears to be the slogan that every cram school adheres to. The topics for an entire school year are "taught" between the months of June and October. Classes during the remaining term (November to March) are devoted to what this cottage industry calls "Revision of Portions". That is, students are made to practice the same content over and over again; repeating answers over and over again; and solving question papers over and over again. The idea is that if you do this for four full months, no final exam question is likely to slip through the cracks.
Most instructors in these classes have regular day jobs - of teaching the same classes in the schools and colleges that employ them. Why these teachers need to be paid double for the same job - and why parents need to pay double for the same services completely beats us.
The system is highly unregulated. Superlatives - as in Brilliant Tutorials, Excellent Tutorials - don billboards everywhere. Some signs are pasted on trees and on residential housing gates with the name of the coaching provider, the classes of instruction and the ubiquitous mobile number all in small font. After all how much information can you squeeze on to a tree?
Cram schools are unfortunately not just the disease in India, they are reported to be the case in other Asian countries as well, including China, Taiwan and South Korea. Here's an excellent, but shocking, article about the practice in South Korea as reported in Time magazine. Everything in the article applies to the Indian context except that there is no regulation in India at all. So, the situation is many times worse.
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