India’s gruelling private education industry continues to exert its influence, mostly negative, over India’s youth. In the most recent manifestation of this influence, a 12-year-old boy from Bengaluru ran away from his coaching institute and was then found in Hyderabad and brought home safely. But the incident begets a much bigger question about the amount of pressure put on the shoulders of young children about their education. We’ve killed the joy of discovery and learning.
The young boy was enrolled at Allen, a coaching institute famous for preparing students for competitive exams such as IIT-JEE for engineering and NEET for medical school. According to news reports, the reason for running away from home is being investigated by the police, although it was initially attributed to being caught ‘copying in an exam’. The police are also investigating how he managed to find cash to travel to Hyderabad.
A child, barely in 6th grade, choosing to run away from a coaching centre should be a warning—to parents, teachers, and coaching institutes.
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Reality of coaching institutes
Anyone questioning the child’s history in this situation is overlooking the role played by adults and the atmosphere in which students grow up. This isn’t about a particular child’s case either – it is the sad reality of thousands of young children who are sent to coaching institutes daily in India. If children are brought up in environments where grades and schools are privileged over physical and mental health, how will they ever learn to prioritize themselves?
The way coaching institutes are run in India is the best example of this imbalance of priorities. Their purpose is to pit students against each other in a competitive rat race, in a bid to produce ‘the best’ results. This process has been portrayed and critiqued in popular media through movies like 3 Idiots (2009) and shows like Kota Factory (2021). The actual results of this process have been witnessed by the country for years now, with a rise in young students in Kota and other coaching centres attempting to end their lives.
The Union Ministry of Education recently issued new guidelines for coaching institutes stating they cannot enroll students under 16 years or make misleading promises.
Despite these obvious red flags, parents continue to send their children to expensive coaching centres; it’s the only way they know to equip their children to face the competitive world of entrance examinations. Some parents even save up money or take loans to send their children to the top coaching institutes in the country. It could secure them a seat in one of the best colleges in the country, but at what cost? Reports from Kota and New Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar show the plight of many young students who are often unable to adjust to a new location, with the pressure of studies becoming an added burden on their mental health.
It can be argued that coaching centres serve an important role in a system of tests and competitive examinations. Most of these institutes have a rigorous curriculum and the process of learning in groups can be beneficial for a lot of students.
But they also instill an unhealthy and rigid competitive spirit in children—where there’s no space for failure and loss. In mock tests and internal exams, the students are made to compete against each other in the cutthroat system that ‘good’ coaching classes are infamous for. They fight for every mark, every extra minute in the exam duration. These students start to view any form of failure as something they cannot come back from.
If coaching centers are really fundamental to education, they need to be overhauled in a major way to actually cater to students’ needs. Only when institutions change their ways can we expect children to follow suit.
This article has been updated to reflect the facts of the case.
Views are personal.
There is also need to make children strong and understand that it is ok to make mistakes and it is also fine to get punished for it …learn from it and move forward.
One thing you’re forgetting is the role of parents.It is very easy to blame coaching classes but they are not pressuring students to enroll.coaching centre are just filling the gap.Parents must talk to their kids about their experiences.If some one is cheating definitely teachers will scold.