Regulating coaching centres

Guidelines are well-meaning but hard to enforce

The government’s latest guidelines for coaching centres is a well-meaning but optimistic attempt to bring some order into an industry that has fallen into some disrepute with a growing number of student suicides and accusations of misleading claims in advertisements. The guidelines are unexceptionable in intent. They set out, in some detail, conditions for registration, infrastructure requirements, timings, and fee structure. Among these guidelines are the requirements that a coaching centre must have more than 50 students with a minimum age limit of 16 years, all teachers must be graduates, the centre must not make false promises, fees from students leaving a course halfway must be refunded, classes must not be held during regular school hours, and they should not exceed five hours a day. The guidelines also require such centres to have periodic sensitisation sessions for students with mental health professionals, and mention, sensibly, that assessment tests should remain confidential. It is telling that the government has also deemed it necessary to specify the provision of such basic requirements as fire and building safety codes, medical treatment facilities and adequate ventilation and lighting in classrooms.

Such minute specifications inadvertently highlight the abysmal standards at many fly-by-night centres where fees, nevertheless, run into lakhs of rupees. Though the guidelines seek to introduce some minimum standards by including penalties for transgressions, these are unlikely to bring about any significant change. For one, sheer numbers will make it challenging to monitor standards  with any degree of efficacy. There are over 30,000 tuition and coaching centres in India, and not all of them are conveniently grouped for inspection in a single city like Kota. The redress mechanism for aggrieved students and parents is also sub-optimal. The guidelines refer to a “competent authority” without specifying the nature of this body or a committee established for the purpose by the government concerned. The regulation of education at the 10+2 level falls within the jurisdiction of states and Union Territories. Monitoring standards, therefore, could vary widely according to the inclination and capabilities of local governments. The penalties stipulated in the guidelines are unlikely to act as a deterrent — at Rs 25,000 for the first offence and Rs 1 lakh for the second, and registration revocation for any subsequent breach. The guidelines also do not appear to cover the vast universe of online classes, where violation of standards could be more rampant.

The Ministry of Education has responded to a growing crisis, but its guidelines are unlikely to be able to address the underlying problems that contribute to it. One is that a lack of quality engineering, management and medical institutes intensifies competition for a limited number of seats at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and top-rung medical colleges. For example, each year, some 800,000 students take the entrance examinations for just 50,000 seats available at the IITs, National Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Information Technology. This rush for scarce quality education is influenced by a long-term structural deficiency of the job market. The low availability of employment, especially one that offers perks and benefits, induces students to qualify themselves optimally to make the cut even for lower-level jobs. Altering this dynamic will require a deeper economic reform to meaningfully expand the job market so that coaching centres gradually become redundant.