‘Dummies’ For IIT

No Change

• Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal wants entrance tests revamped to reclaim ground from coaching centres and improve schools
• But coaching centres have shown no slowdown in student uptake
• In Kota, a coaching town, “dummy schools” continue to flourish too, allowing students to take board exams without attendance

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he Union HRD ministry says it is trying to ease the pressure on students sitting for the engineering and medical college entrance exams. But the claim hasn’t convinced students so far, going by the scene in Kota, a Rajasthan town that is the mecca of coaching, chiefly for the IIT-JEE, but also for entrance exams to other engineering and medical colleges. There’s no slowdown in enrolments at the town’s numerous coaching centres; nor have enrolments slowed at “dummy schools”, a unique Kota phenomenon, which register students for the Class XII board exams but do not insist on attendance, allowing them to devote all their time to what the coaching centres dole out. The underlying belief is that the bright and hard-working will clear both, the entrance test to a top professional college (their primary goal) and the Class XII exam, a necessity if they seek admission to any professional college.

It’s a comfortable arrangement for the 50,000-odd students who arrive in Kota every year, having cleared their Class X board exams and with dreams of making it to the top professional colleges. For two years, it’s Gradgrinding tapasya at the coaching centres: no regular schooling for them, no sports or extra-curricular activities, not even the relief of occasional mischief at school assemblies or mass drills. For the formality of clearing Class XII, the centres nudge them towards the “dummy schools” the town is awash with. These schools have few teachers and almost no infrastructure—they collect fees but are more or less run on paper, making them a lucrative proposition. Take the case of one such school in Kota: it had as few as 50 students who took the Class X exams, but the enrolment for Class XII, fed no doubt by IIT pilgrims, was a whopping 500. “It’s a business that has crippled the system. It’s like snatching away part of their childhood,” says O.P. Changani, director of the Kota Engineering College. And Aruna Broota, a former professor of psychology, says, “It affects a child’s career and mindset. Coaching can’t substitute for the school experience; it can help after the board exams, but lack of formal schooling robs students of their childhood.”

Schools focus on—or are at least meant to focus on—clearing concepts and fundamentals. But coaching centres focus only on how to crack entrance exams by working through past question papers and framing new ones based on patterns that show up. They also drill students in hundreds of numericals, so they ace them almost mechanically. The dichotomy is well acknowledged: many who do well in school often fail to crack the IIT-JEE; many who crack the IIT-JEE often do badly in the school board exam.

Owners of “dummy schools” and teachers at coaching centres blame the system. As one dummy-school owner put it, “We are here because coaching institutes are here; the coaching culture is growing because our education system is not dependable.” Coaching institute owners say most students arriving in Kota are bright, having scored more than 90 per cent at board exams, and all they need is some assistance to realise their dreams—which the institutes provide. And in defence, Pramod Bansal of Bansal Classes says classes for those who are in Class XII are held in the evening, so they can attend school; morning classes are for those who have already cleared Class XII.

But hardly any IIT pilgrim at Kota attends school. Shivam Singh, a student doing the Bull’s Eye programme of Bansal Classes, says he’d been told not to bother about Class XII exams. Another student, Vaibhav Sable, says he will go back to his school in Maharashtra when it’s time to take the board exam. Till then, it’s the pressure cooker for him and thousands of others who stake everything to take the system on its own terms.