Over the years, the Valley of Kashmir particularly the Srinagar city has witnessed a mushrooming growth of private coaching centres across the length and breadth. In the last few years in particular, the Valley has got franchises of some top-notch coaching centres established in different states of the Country.
Besides the existing institutes, the advent of new coaching centres in the Valley has resulted in a paradigm shift of the formal schooling of the students.
As per the rough figures, there are around 630 private coaching centres in J&K providing private coaching for various national level competitive exams besides the coaching for classes 9th to 12th.
Besides the students who opt for private coaching for their high and higher secondary classes, around 15000 students opt for private coaching for competing in NEET, JEE and other national level exams.
Excluding the fee charged for the class 9th to 12th coaching, each student is charged more than Rs 50000 for the three months crash course offered by different coaching centres established in the Valley.
The amount goes beyond Rs 70000 to one lakh as well.
All these coaching centres provide coaching to the lakhs of students across Valley in absence of any regulatory mechanism vis-a-vis fee. With the result all these coaching charge the fee as per their sweet will.
No doubt, over the years, the J&K government has taken various initiatives in regulating the functioning of these coaching centres but the fee structure of these institutes always skips a mention in the government orders issued from time to time.
The fee regulatory mechanism is required in all these private coaching centres because it will provide a level playing field to all coaching centres to compete in the market and not resort to fleecing.
Further it will provide a level playing field to students also from poor backgrounds to study in better coaching centres.
The regulation of fee structure in private coaching centres has gone out of sight while the same issue in private schools hits the headlines every now and then.
The private schools always remain in news for giving a hike or fixing any particular fee structure for the students but at the same time the unregulated business of private coaching centres has gone unnoticed till now.
The crux is that there is no regulation or check from any competent authority on the fee structure fixed by these coaching centres as per their sweet will.
It seems that the coaching centres have been given by the government to make a huge business under the garb of providing coaching to the students.
Approximately around 15000 students aspiring to become doctors and engineers join these coaching centres either in class 11th or after qualifying their class 12th examination.
But the fact is that a very few students qualify the exam and the rest of the lot land up in different degree colleges to pursue graduation.
While these coaching centres celebrate and cherish the success of very few students, none of the institutes is made accountable for the failure of the other students who are charged money in lakhs for the coachings.
Approximately the coaching centres are doing a business of around Rs 200 crore per year.
From banners to hoardings and from social media campaigning to newspapers and radio advertisements, the coaching centres only highlight the story of successful students which is negligible in number. This is only done to lure other students to opt for the private coaching to generate huge revenue.
Now coming to the point, the school education department which has a mandate to regulate the functioning of these coaching centres has kept itself confined to check the space provided to the students in square feet and to ensure drinking water and whether toilet facility is available at the institute. In this process, one of the crucial aspects- fee charged from the students, gets ignored.
Over the years, the successive regimes have failed to regulate the fee structure of these coaching centres which is always taken in advance in one installment or to the most in two installments.
The students are not given an option to leave the coaching in the middle or he is not given any refund if he wishes to discontinue the classes for obvious reasons.
The government has constituted a Fee Fixation and Regulatory Committee (FFRC) for the private schools and every year, all the schools are asked to submit their records and other fee related documents . But unfortunately no such mechanism has been put in place for the private coaching centres through which the fee structure of these institutes can be regulated.
Prior to the commencement of the new academic session, all the private coaching centres install their hoardings and banners inviting admissions for coaching for different competitive exams.
These hoardings carry the photographs of the students who qualified the previous NEET and JEE exams but the hoardings do not have a mention of how many could not qualify it. Also, none of the coaching centres mentions the fee charged from students for different coaching programmes and crash courses offered by the institutes.
Most of the time, it has been observed that the coaching centres invite admissions when the registration of these institutes expires. With the result these coaching institutes enroll students for private coaching without getting fresh registration from the competent authorities.
Nobody knows the fate of the students in case the department denies registration to any of these coaching centres at any point of time.
The cause of worry remains that the students who are charged whole in advance can land in trouble if the coaching institute is sealed by the government for obvious reasons.
The move will result in wastage of hard earned money of the parents of these students.
In the past so many cases have come to fore wherein the students were charged whole fee in advance leaving no room for them to change the institute or discontinue the coaching even within two weeks.
Also, none of these private coaching institutes enroll the specially-abled students as there is no provision for such students to attend classes at majority of these institutes. This issue has remained out of focus of the government as well.
Now coming to the point, the government should shift its focus from registration to regulation of fee structure of these coaching centres which has remained unregulated over these years.
Let a proper system be put in place keeping in view the interest of the students and the parents.
No doubt the coaching institutes contribute towards the education sector but the system should run systematically for the benefit of the students and stakeholders as well. As per the standing guidelines, all the coaching are providing 10 percent free admission to the students from EWS but in most of the cases these students are harassed and humiliated till the culmination of the coaching program.
To conclude, it is well said that education could be a great leveller of social inequities and inequalities. However for this goal to become a reality it is important that everyone gets a fair chance to study and excel without any fear of bias.
Private sector is important for the growth of the economy, but if private institutions resort to fleecing people on different pretexts, it would defeat the purpose of ensuring social equity.
The authorities must consider bringing legislative reforms to bring in private coaching centres under its regulatory umbrella so that everyone is able to progress under the principle of equity.