New Delhi: Bridging the gap between school curricula and competitive examinations, both in terms of what is taught and the level at which it is taught, helping students identify their aptitude early, and allowing voluntary academic support classes after school hours within school premises are among the recommendations made by a high-powered panel formed by the government to reduce dependence on coaching centres among students.
Mandated to examine issues leading to students’ dependence on coaching centers and suggest measures to reduce it, the panel was created by the Ministry of Education in June last year. According to a source, the panel has made recommendations aimed at making the school system “self-sufficient”, so that students do not have to turn to coaching centres for preparation. “Schools should work on filling the existing void in academic life, whereby students feel the need to go to coaching centres,” the source told ThePrint.
ThePrint explains what the seven-member committee has proposed in its draft report to reduce students’ dependence on coaching centres, and what these recommendations could mean for India’s coaching industry and the way students prepare for competitive examinations.
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Bring JEE, NEET, and school curriculum at par
Highlighting a “discrepancy” and “gap” between the curriculum taught in schools and what is tested in competitive examinations, the committee examined question papers of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), recommending that the topics, content and depth of questions should be aligned with what students are taught in school.
“The students are often tested on topics that are not taught in Classes 11 and 12, or are asked questions that require a far greater depth of preparation than what schools provide. This, the panel believes, gives coaching institutes a significant advantage and makes their intervention almost necessary for students targeting competitive exams,” said another source aware of the recommendations made.
At the same time, it said schools need to teach concepts in greater depth and in more complex ways, so students are able to apply what they learn to unfamiliar problems.
The official quoted above explained, “A student may learn the basic principle of a pulley in school, but a competitive exam could combine multiple pulleys and turn the same principle into a significantly more complex problem. While the underlying physics remains unchanged, students often need additional coaching to learn how to tackle such questions.”
Experts welcomed the recommendation. President of the Educators Federation Keshav Agarwal said the move would work only if India’s 60-odd school boards agree on a common core syllabus and comparable learning standards for Classes 11 and 12.
“Without this foundation, alignment with JEE, NEET or other entrance examinations will remain uneven and may advantage students of certain boards. Once this consensus is achieved, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), medical institutions, testing agencies and school boards should jointly ensure that entrance examinations remain within the declared curriculum and assess understanding and application, not access to specialised coaching,” he told ThePrint.
Voluntary classes after school hours
Alongside changes in entrance examinations, the panel has proposed allowing voluntary academic support classes after school hours within school premises. The latter proposal is aimed at addressing another consequence of the coaching culture: ‘dummy schools’, where students remain formally enrolled in school but spend much of their time preparing at coaching centres.
“The committee has suggested that, where students want additional preparation, it could instead be offered after school hours on the school campus — while ensuring that participation remains voluntary and schools do not themselves turn into coaching centres,” said the first source quoted above.
Shekhar Dutt, founder of online coaching platform Sleepy Classes, said providing additional academic support after school hours could be useful, but questioned who would provide the resources and instruction. “Extra hours isn’t a bad thing. Coaching institutes also invest extra hours and resources. The important question is who will invest those extra hours, who will provide the resources, who will teach and what they will teach. If the school itself is providing the same resources and teaching, then what will be the difference?” he asked.
To tackle the dummy school menace, the panel also advised that Class 12 marks should be given some preference along with competitive exam scores in admissions to higher education institutions.
The panel also suggested that school teachers should be trained to teach topics in greater depth and encourage students to use “logical reasoning” to solve problems. It noted that teachers are often trained to rely on “rote learning”, a practice that needs to change.
Help students understand aptitude early
The panel further recommended that students be made aware of their aptitude and strengths from as early as Class 8, along with the range of career options available in fields suited to their abilities.
The panel believes that students remain overly inclined towards two career pathways — engineering and medicine — which leads millions to sit for these high-stakes entrance exams without fully understanding their own strengths and interests.
“The idea is to make students aware of the career pathways other than medical and engineering from the beginning so that they don’t consider these exams as make-or-break points of their life,” the official quoted above said.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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