E-Paper
Pvt coaching for tribal students
In what is being seen as an effort to woo the tribals before elections, the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to provide free coaching to 800 tribal students after class 10 for the preparation of national entrance exam.
In what is being seen as an effort to woo the tribals before elections, the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to provide free coaching to 800 tribal students after class 10 for the preparation of national entrance exam for admission in top engineering, medical and law institutes.
This is the first time that such a facility is being given to tribal students of the state.
The government will not only bear all the expenses but also give incentives to the coaching institute if a student gets good rank in these exams.
However tribal department officials said the scheme had nothing to do with elections. “The scheme has nothing to do with election year. For the past few years, the district administration of tribal districts and tribal department have been trying to provide national level coaching at the government schools but the outcome was not a satisfactory one so the state tribal department has turned to private coaching institutes,” said Seema Soni, deputy commissioner, tribal department.
The department has floated a tender for request for proposal in this regard. The project is for two years and it will extend further after seeing the success rate.
This year 200 tribal students have cleared the IIT JEE mains but only 5% made it to the IIT JEE Advanced.
“The competition is very tough and it is not possible for the government school teachers to provide updated knowledge. The parallel arrangement of guest lecture through video conferencing was done but that is not feasible for good number of students,” said Soni.
In the first phase, the coaching will be provided at four centers-Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur.
The students lauded the step and said it would surely increase the selection of students but also boost the confidence.
IIT JEE mains- 2018 selected student Adarsh Singh from Alirajpur said, “It is really good for us as most of the tribal students came from under privileged family and can’t afford the fees. Our school teachers tried to clear our concept but it always came in our mind that we should have specialised coaching.”
However, the activist called it a step toward privatisation of the education.
An activist Akshay Hunka said, “If the government is really concern about the future of students, why only 800. They can do miracle by improving the education system in the schools. Most of the government schools are running either without teachers or without infrastructure. The government can hire good intellectual teachers to teach the student in the school instead of paying fees to private coaching institutes.”
