Coaching centres come under Supreme
Court scanner
Coaching centres for professional
courses, which have mushroomed across the country and are notorious for
harassing students over fees and issuing misleading advertisements about their
achievements that create false hope and even lead to suicides amongst students,
have come under the scanner of the Supreme Court.
Shockingly, the Human Resource
Development Ministry, in an affidavit filed in the apex court in connection
with a PIL on the issue, has admitted to suicides by students enrolled at
coaching centres. However, it washed its hands of the matter, saying it is the
responsibility of states to act against errant institutes. "Human Resource
Development Ministry is only responsible for coordination and determination of
standards in institutions for higher education and research, scientific and
technical institutions.
There have been instances of suicides
committed by students, including of premier educational institutions like IITs
and NITs and the reasons as per fact finding and inquiry committees have been
depression, peer pressure and emotional. Concerned state's law and order
authority has to take action against the coaching centre," said the
affidavit filed by Gopal Krishna, a senior HRD ministry official.
He said the report of a central task
force had recommended a counselling centre in each institute but most centres
have not implemented this measure. The alarming situation, which raises serious
questions about the manner of functioning of a large number of coaching centres
that have mushroomed across the country, was brought to the notice of the apex
court through the PIL filed by the Students Federation of India (SFI), the
students' wing of the CPI-M.
"Because of the hype created by
the aggressive advertising by the coaching institutes, a situation has arisen
where when a child realizes that he can't make it to the attempted medical or
engineering course, the guilt of spending his/her father's hard-earned money on
coaching classes is leading him/her to commit suicide," the PIL said.
Quoting a report by credit rating agency Crisil, the PIL said the private
coaching business is currently worth Rs.40,000 crore a year and is expected to grow to
more than Rs.80,000 crore.
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Realising the gravity of the situation, the CBSE informed the apex court that it recently issued a circular which stated: "Premises of CBSE schools should not be used for commercial activity. No coaching classes or parallel classes should be run in a school that consumes and affects regular time table of school and that deviates focus of students from regular course of study."
]
Realising the gravity of the situation, the CBSE informed the apex court that it recently issued a circular which stated: "Premises of CBSE schools should not be used for commercial activity. No coaching classes or parallel classes should be run in a school that consumes and affects regular time table of school and that deviates focus of students from regular course of study."
The SFI's lawyers, Deepak Prakash and
Subhash Chandran, argued that the coaching centres not only caused a financial
burden on students by insisting on payment of the entire course fee in advance
but also created psychological problems and increased stress levels.
"These coaching institutions offer false hopes to students and parents,
promising bright results even though the candidate may not even have an
aptitude for engineering or medicine," the PIL said.
