oppn parties Dummy Schools, Coaching Centres And Children Below 16

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oppn parties
Dummy Schools, Coaching Centres And Children Below 16

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2024-01-23 14:44:12

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

The Centre had last week issued new guidelines to register and regulate coaching centres. These guidelines were necessitated as unregulated and unregistered coaching centres were functioning without any rules. There were complaints about lack of infrastructure (students packed in small rooms, no toilets and lack of drinking water, among other things), under-qualified teachers, exorbitant fees and other anomalies. Then there was the problem of student suicides due to lack of counseling and immense pressure. Another thing which the Centre did was to mandate that enrolment of students could take place only after the student had passed the secondary examination or attained the age of 16. This the government has done for two reasons - one, to ensure holistic development of younger children in proper schools and two, to reduce the pressure on children below 16 so that their childhood is not lost.

The last has irked the coaching centres as between 10 to 15 % of their revenue comes from enrolling students below 16 years in age. In a meeting of the Coaching Federation of India, a body which claims a membership of 25000 centres, it was decided to seek legal advice on how to fight this fiat. The Federation wants the government to relax the age limit as it feels that students need to start at a younger age to crack the fiercely competitive exams.

But on the flip side, especially in towns like Kota, dummy or proxy schools have come up that are used by these coaching centres to enroll  students as young as 10 years. While the students attend coaching classes for IIT/JEE or medical or any other course, these schools provide them attendance and promote them to higher class every year by proxy. This is something that is an impediment in their holistic development. That is why the government has fixed the age at 16 and when the child has passed his secondary examination and is ready to choose what he wants to do next. 

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