(UCAN): Church leaders in India welcomed a government ban on admitting students below 16 years of age to centres coaching [tuition centres] for competitive exams, aiming to arrest increasing student suicide cases.
“It is the need of the hour as there are no proper guidelines to control private-run coaching centres in the country,” Salesian Father Maria Charles, secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India [CBCI] Office for Commission for Education.
Father Charles explained that coaching centres are run like “business entities and this affects the overall development of students.”
The order was issued after 29 students ended their lives last year in Kota, a coaching centre hub in northern Rajasthan, as they could not cope with intense academic pressure at an early age.
The figures in 2023 were the highest recorded in Kota since 2015. The government issued the order on January 19 following complaints of rising student suicide cases and a lack of facilities and teaching methodologies at coaching institutes.
Parents in India often get attracted to the arduous “start early to beat the competition” package offered by coaching centres
Coaching centres cannot enroll students below 16 and make misleading promises about examinations, according to new guidelines from the education ministry.
In India, there are coaching institutes offering programmes for 6th grade students to prepare them for national-level examinations. The duration of these programmes is around 175 hours, which deprives students of time to play and make friends.
The new guidelines are meant to stem the unregulated growth of private coaching centres in the country.
Parents in India often get attracted to the arduous “start early to beat the competition” package offered by coaching centres.
Kota emerged as a coaching centre hub in the early 1990s. It earned the sobriquet “the new Kashi” of education after prime minister, Narendra Modi, hailed the city. Kashi is a famous temple town and a sacred place under Hinduism.
Coaching centres cannot enroll students below 16 and make misleading promises about examinations, according to new guidelines from the education ministry.
Hundreds of thousands of students from all over India flock to the northern city every year. These coaching institutes have become the city’s economic lifeline. There are at least 4,000 student hostels and over 40,000 paying guest facilities in the city.
Located more than 500 kilometres from New Delhi, Kota’s landscape is dotted with advertisements for coaching centres and the facilities offered by them.
Father Charles lamented that there is no basic arrangement to help students “handle pressure” at these centres.
Over 13,000 students committed suicide in 2021 in India, a rise of 4.5 per cent compared with 12,526 deaths in 2020.
Many young people took the extreme step due to the failure in examinations, according to a 2021 National Crime Records Bureau report.
Over 13,000 students committed suicide in 2021 in India, a rise of 4.5 per cent compared with 12,526 deaths in 2020.
Home-grown start-ups have mushroomed in the country and there is a growing culture of pressuring students to learn coding at the age of six. Learning coding binds students to the computer screen, robbing them of the chance to think creatively and interact with peers.
John Mathew, who runs a private coaching centre in New Delhi, said that “the peer pressure and undue influence by parents” affects students at a tender age.
Mathew, said that previously, it was the prerogative of students from affluent families to enroll in coaching centres. Now, students from marginalised communities join them. They are treated as competitors and hence “they are targeted,” he observed.
“Children are too young to face this pressure,” Mathew said.
The new guidelines say there should be no discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, and descent.
The Catholic Church runs nearly 30,000 educational institutions, including schools, universities, colleges and medical schools. “It also runs a few coaching centres,” said Father Charles.
“As far as the Christian institutions are concerned, we make sure that children are taken care of properly to cope with the challenges,” he added.
