New Delhi: With hundreds of residential coaching institutes and dummy schools mushrooming across the country based on the ‘Kota model’ and students dropping out of school after class 10 to prepare for engineering and medical entrance exams, school education secretary Thursday expressed concerns over “pressure” on the students and how they have little to no time for recreation.
In a hybrid interaction with principals of Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE)-affiliated schools at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, Thursday, Sanjay Kumar, secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, said, “Look at the kind of pressure coaching has brought about, we often don’t talk about it. But I guess we need to talk about it… Is Kota the model for the country?”
“If Kota is the model for the country, then where is the joyful learning? Where is the time to be able to absorb the good things that are coming to us?… Children are not coming to school. They are joining dummy schools where attendance requirements are taken care of,” he added.
Dummy schools are the schools that provide the regular passing certificate and marksheet without students having to attend classes. These schools also make arrangements for students to appear for board exams as private candidates.
CBSE chairperson Nidhi Chhibber was also present at the meeting held to discuss progress and challenges faced over the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) launched in 2020.
Of 60,000 principals and school officials who joined the live interaction through CBSE YouTube channel, 250 from Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) region were physically present at the event.
Several school principals raised issues over how the introduction of Common University Entrance Test (CUET) has “diminished the value of school education” leading to students dropping out of schools and joining the dummy schools and coaching centres.
Last year, the University Grants Commission launched CUET — with a goal to create a level-playing field to overcome the problem of soaring cut-offs— as a common gateway for undergraduate admissions in all central universities and other institutes.
Kota is Rajasthan’s residential coaching hub where over one lakh engineering as well as medical aspirants come each year to prepare for the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Exam (IIT-JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). The trend of coaching which started in the 1980s is now reportedly a whopping Rs 6,000 crore business.
Also Read: Provide counselling sessions, recorded lectures — authorities order coaching centres in Kota
Advent of ‘dummy schools’, drop outs
During the session, several school principals pointed out that with the introduction of the CUET and the removal of weightage of class 12 marks, more and more parents are withdrawing their children from schools and enrolling them into coaching centers post class 10.
Vijay Dutta, a representative of the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, pointed out that with the CUET coming into picture, the value of school education has disappeared.
“The significance of the school evaluation has almost disappeared. Students who want to get into Delhi university consider the [class 12] exam to be just another board exam, therefore the value of the CBSE has diminished,” he said.
Anuradha Joshi, principal of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Delhi, said, “There was time when students of classes 11 and 12 also participated in school education wholeheartedly, when there was a percentage of marks from school that went towards the JEE\NEET exams.”
Expressing concerns over students dropping out of schools after class 10, one of the principals present at the interaction, who did not wish to be named, said, “I have had a difficult time convincing parents against removing their children from school after class 10. I even raised the concern that students will miss out on important life skill learning from school. However, the parents are convinced that cracking the CUET is more important.”
“These unregulated coaching centers are making promises of students clearing the exam via coaching with unchecked impunity,” the principal added.
She added that, years ago, there was a gap between the end of the school education “that would end in December” and the beginning of college/higher education with students appearing for “competitive exams six months later”.
Taking note of all the grievances raised by school principals, Kumar asked CBSE to constitute a committee of principals to come up with suggestions for the ministry to look into the trend of mushrooming coaching centres and dummy schools.
“We are also seized of the issue on how the primacy of the class 12 board exam can be maintained. While I can not give you points on how that can be done, we will look into the matter.”
Adding to the dialogue, CBSE chairperson said, “One of the mandates of the Parakh is not just to bring all boards at an equivalent level but also to look at different ways of assessment to make it more low stakes and stress-free.”
Parakh is an online platform focused on school assessments and examination practices which aims to bring equivalence of boards across the country. Its objective is to ensure a fair assessment system promoting equity in performance and equivalence in the assessment of students.
Among other issues raised by the school principals and representatives were the reskilling of the existing teachers to keep up with the NEP 2020, the pattern of class 10 exam under the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and ways for international boards and CBSE to collaborate.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
Also Read: No CUET coaching boom yet, but exam’s ‘inclusiveness’, impact on learning still in question