Private coaching factories: widening educational divide and exclusion in India

Abstract

India registered significant growth in engineering and technological education and expanded infrastructure to meet the future requirement in engineering education. Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) are termed as premier technical institutes and getting admission in these institutes is a matter of academic as well as social esteem and a guarantee of good jobs. IITs have become a global brand for big companies to hire engineering professionals hence entrance examination for admission in these institutes has become a challenging task; resulted high competition among the IIT engineering aspirants. Consequently, market of private coaching has emerged over the past few years which have turned into a big business. As a result private coaching promoted high competition among the aspirants and disability such as educational divide and exclusion. Students are facing social and peer pressure and sometimes talented students commit suicide, which is a matter of concern. Therefore, an attempt is made in this paper to highlight such issues which require certain policy initiatives to diminish the role of private coaching for preparing competitive examinations such as IIT-JEE examination as private coaching adversely affecting the performance of students who are unable to access coaching due to several social and economic barriers.