Private tuition: Bane or Boon
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 27 , 2014 -

Commercialization and privatization of education sector has reached its zenith in Manipur. This is not a healthy trend by any yardstick.

Both students as well as parents have been infatuated to an ubiquitous culture of private tuition.

Since the past decade, groups of parents thronging at the gates of tuition centres or private residences of teachers have become a common sight.

Presence of parents at such sites has a common purpose, a mission to 'educate' their children through private tuition.

Parents' escorting their children to the tuition centres is another inescapable sight. This is a new found tradition visible in almost all localities of Imphal and greater Imphal.

Thirty years back, private tuition was reserved for a privileged few who were academically not so bright. Even then, private tuition was largely confined to one or two subject(s).

Over the years, private tuition or coaching has become an integral part of formal (school) education system in Manipur.

With students going for private tuition for each and every subject, private tuition or coaching is fast acquiring the status of a parallel schooling system.

There are many compelling and not so compelling factors for the rise of private coaching system in parallel to the formal schooling system.

No wonder, premier coaching institutions such as COMET and MECI have opened their own schools. Frequent bandhs, boycott and other disturbances are some of the compelling factors.

In the events of bandhs or boycotts, it is Government school students who bear the maximum brunt.

Their more fortunate colleagues reading in private schools are little affected by such disruptions for they have the privilege to go to private tuition centres or hire private tutors.

On the other hand, the Government school students are literally abandoned by the Government and their own teachers whereas their parents could not afford private tuition.

The end result is an unassailable disparity between these two groups of students.

These days the level of competitiveness is much higher and no doubt private tuition equips students better to face examination.

At the same time, it evokes a question of fairness.

Whereas the level of competitiveness is rising year after year, the arena of competition is shrinking reciprocally.

Competition and sense of competitiveness has already become an exclusive domain of private and mission schools only.

These exams have become so lopsidedly unfair that students of Government schools have been thrown out of competition.

This fast growing tradition of going for private tuition gives unfair advantage to those students who can afford while victimizing many poor students.

Apart from the question of fairness, private tuition has many inherent demerits, producing serious implications on multiple aspects of our social life.

The shift in the education pattern is that schools are there to conduct exams and issue certificates, while the actual teaching and learning is done in private tuition/coaching centres.

Schools have deviated asunder from their sacred purpose of imparting education to students. Growing culture of private tuition is a manifestation of parents' dissatisfaction with the performance of schools.

The rising popularity of private tuition and coaching centres has its roots in the Indian education system where marks secured in the examinations are used as the sole criterion to measure a student's abilities.

This system of judging a student's potential and ability defies the very purpose of schools, which is to prepare students for examinations and more importantly for life beyond.

Again, private tuition contradicts the aim of education, that is, to make students think and nurture their innate potentials.

With private tuition assuming central role in the school education system of the State, students have been accustomed to a culture of spoon-feeding.

The culture of spoon-feeding is robbing away the thinking power of our young students.

Students are not allowed to exercise their mental faculty to tackle a problem and arrive at a conclusion of their own because teachers in coaching centres are ever present to supply them with ready-made answers.