It is unregulated, unorganised, and its profits can be the envy of some of the best and the biggest business houses in the country. And though it does not officially bear the tag of an ‘industry’, its growth, even during times of recession, can make the most pampered sectors in the corporate sector see green. There are no official estimates, but insiders say the total revenue in their business is close to Rs 10,000 crore which, incidentally, is only for class room coaching; home and online tutoring is said to be worth another Rs 20,000 crore. This is the world of shadow education in India — a segment that’s emerging stronger and larger with every passing year.
The coaching classes market, or ‘sweat schools’ as they are often referred to, consists largely of private tuitions and entrance test-preparations. But the sector, though huge, is highly fragmented and regional in nature. There are a handful of players (three to four) who are known to have an all-India presence and are worth more than Rs 100 crore.
Another 10-odd can boast of revenues in the range of Rs 10-100 crore. The rest, and the number runs into thousands even if we do not take into consideration the small momand-pop enterprises doing home tutoring, make healthy revenues of several lakhs.
Not surprisingly, even as the existing players are trying to consolidate, international ones - like Educomp - are jumping into the fray, hoping to expand in a big way as they are in a position to make more substantial investments.
UNLISTED, IN THE SHADOWS
Listed players in this segment, however, are still just a handful — Aptech, Career-Point, NIIT and Everonn - and have captured only about two per cent of the private education market. Interestingly, not all players are looking merely at private tutoring or coaching; many of them provide information technologies to schools or build brick-and mortar schools and colleges.
A large part of this sector continues to operate in the shadows. No regulatory restrictions on profitability, low capital intensity and a quick payback period of two-five years are the main growth drivers on the supply side. On the demand side, shortage of jobs, cutthroat competition for higher education, parental aspirations combined with underperforming mainstream educational infrastructure have led to the ever-growing appetite for supplementary education.
But whatever its name and nature - home tuitions, classroom coaching, study material source or online classes - demand seems to be on the rise for these ‘cram’ shops. No stream is sacred, no area untouched. Name an entrance exam and there is coaching available to help you ‘crack’ it. Engineering, medicine, management and civil services may be the more popular exams for which students undergo training, but think of any possible career, or the most obscure test, and chances are there will be some institute offering ‘training’ for it.
Even creative fields like art, where you would think coaching would be of little use, throw up a proliferation of trainers. Be it the prestigious National School of Design or, for that matter, even fashion designing, you can get coached for it. And it’s not just college and school going students who are the clients, even tiny-tots are in the net, getting ‘coached’ to make the right moves and noises to get admission into nursery classes of reputed schools.
BIG COSTS, LITTLE GUARANTEE
In the race to get ahead, everyone wants to maximise their potential, and this is where the coaching industry steps in. But none of this is easy on the purse; it comes at a substantial investment and with little or no guarantees of a positive outcome. One can even end up paying more in coaching fees than in expenses for the actual course one is preparing for. In fact, the amount spent on coaching and various affiliated needs may be higher than what they have to pay in terms of fees at, say, an IIT, which is about Rs 50,000 a year.
Students start training for engineering and medical entrance examinations from class XI onwards, sometimes earlier at class IX. While some go from bigger cities to training institutes in smaller places like Kota and Pala that have become coaching hubs, there is a parallel trend that sees students from small towns trudge to metros in search of better institutes.
Similarly, private tuitions at the school level are equally prohibitive. And, ironically, this sometimes happens when it is the same teacher holding forth both at the child’s school and tutorial. A number of such teachers double up as tutors after school hours — and going by the accounts of some of the students, teaching skills improve considerably in the latter. What is worrisome, though, is that some teachers penalise students in various ways for not availing of the tuition facility.
Though, in a certain way, coaching centres can be seen as something that helps break the hegemony of elite academic institutions by allowing access to students from humble backgrounds to better course material and training — thus allowing for a level-playing field — the high costs involved can put some of the same students at an immediate disadvantage, leading to further inequity in the system.
HYPER-DEMAND FUELS RACE
In all this, the hyper-demand for better learning ensures there is coaching even to get into some sought after coaching institutes which, in turn, hold their own examinations and screen students before admitting them. Just to give an idea in terms of numbers, the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination, one of the largest such exercises in the world, is taken by about 12 lakh students, 80 per cent of whom take some sort of coaching for it.
After engineering, it is the medical and management streams, along with civil services and tutorials for SAT and GRE (examinations required to study in the US), that garner the most number of students. There are several others forming a smaller part of the pie.
Matching the growing number of students in search of the ‘right’ coaching centre are the institutes, making it difficult for many to home in on the perfect ones. Compounding this are the blatantly false claims doing the rounds; students can never be too sure what they are getting into. In June this year, the battle between two Mumbai based institutes escalated so much that it reached the police. It happened after one of them put out an advertisement saying some students who had failed to clear entrance examinations after enrolling in other institutes (which they named) did so after being trained by them. In another case last year, two competing institutes training MBAs took their differences to the Advertising Council over false claims. Again, this year, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had to intervene and order an inquiry regarding claims made over the success of a 2009 IIT topper.
Students have few avenues for recourse in case anything goes wrong. More often than not they are asked to pay upfront for the entire duration of the session; they cannot change their mind midway and ask for a refund. Many talk about the interesting modus operandi some of these classes adopt. Through internal selection, they pick out the brighter students and form a separate class which is mentored and tutored by their best teachers.
The others, meanwhile, are taught by mediocre teachers who are mere graduates or have failed to clear the very examination they are tutoring others for. Though selective tutoring helps institutes raise their ‘success rate’, bringing in more numbers, the larger group of students suffers.
For teachers, at least a majority of them, it is a win-win situation. Many on an average make up to Rs 2, 000 an hour. The best among them are known to command a staggering Rs 5, 000 an hour. Teaching for 10 hours a day, that’s a neat package of Rs 50, 000 per day. But this pales in comparison to the money the institutes make from every batch that may have anywhere from 35 to 150 students. The market for civil services coaching - an exam in which around 1.5 lakh candidates from all over India appear - in only Delhi is estimated to be about Rs 100 crore with students paying Rs 30, 000-45, 000 for a three to five month course.
BASIC EDUCATION GAP
Problems notwithstanding, it is easy to see what drives this phenomenal bazaar - the yawning gap between the learning imparted through our basic education system and the level of entrance examinations. “We operate in the valley that has been formed between academic standards in the mainstream system and the competitive standard of entrance examinations of various professional courses,” says the head of a coaching institute.
Occasionally, there are voices of opposition against this parallel universe of education, protesting the larger principle of it and the way it operates and impacts the mainstream education system. Both government and educationists grumble about it and say things that suggest the monster will be tamed and regulated. But on the ground it remains business as usual.
In 2006, IIT-JEE — the joint entrance examination held for Indian Institutes of Technologies — changed its test pattern after it was felt that students were spending too much time in coaching classes and ignoring their class XI and XII examination, negatively impacting their chances for other avenues. It was also found that almost 70 per cent of students who cleared the IIT-JEE in 2005 had dropped a year or more. Faculty at IIT's added that students who qualified for these institutes were burnt out by the time they entered the class rooms due to the years of preparation, and did not eventually perform well.
Starting next year, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will ring in changes in the civil services exams that will reduce the importance of coaching by introducing an aptitude test instead of a subject-specific test.
But none of this seems to have made much of a dent on the coaching sector. True to its ‘shadowy’ character, it morphs and adapts accordingly, and continues to flourish. In anticipation of the UPSC change, coaching institutes have already started advertising and conducting classes for the aptitude test. They claim they can “bring out” the aptitude in students who don’t know “how to gauge it”. As for the JEE, the government is planning to increase the weightage given to performance of students in class XII. It is even considering an aptitude test for screening purposes before holding intense subject-specific exams.
NEED FOR REGULATION
But there is little else that is being done on the regulation front. Despite its formidable size and expanse, something that can bring the government good revenue, the sector functions mostly in an unregulated manner. The fact that these coaching shops do not qualify as educational institutions means they do not need to register with the government and can operate off the radar, unchecked and unquestioned. The government accepts it is concerned about the impact of this industry, but hasn’t done much.
Till such time that the concern translates into action, the world of shadow education will continue to attract in unending hordes students both desperate and ambitious, hoping for success in a new India that rewards like never before.
The coaching classes market, or ‘sweat schools’ as they are often referred to, consists largely of private tuitions and entrance test-preparations. But the sector, though huge, is highly fragmented and regional in nature. There are a handful of players (three to four) who are known to have an all-India presence and are worth more than Rs 100 crore.
Another 10-odd can boast of revenues in the range of Rs 10-100 crore. The rest, and the number runs into thousands even if we do not take into consideration the small momand-pop enterprises doing home tutoring, make healthy revenues of several lakhs.
Not surprisingly, even as the existing players are trying to consolidate, international ones - like Educomp - are jumping into the fray, hoping to expand in a big way as they are in a position to make more substantial investments.
UNLISTED, IN THE SHADOWS
Listed players in this segment, however, are still just a handful — Aptech, Career-Point, NIIT and Everonn - and have captured only about two per cent of the private education market. Interestingly, not all players are looking merely at private tutoring or coaching; many of them provide information technologies to schools or build brick-and mortar schools and colleges.
A large part of this sector continues to operate in the shadows. No regulatory restrictions on profitability, low capital intensity and a quick payback period of two-five years are the main growth drivers on the supply side. On the demand side, shortage of jobs, cutthroat competition for higher education, parental aspirations combined with underperforming mainstream educational infrastructure have led to the ever-growing appetite for supplementary education.
But whatever its name and nature - home tuitions, classroom coaching, study material source or online classes - demand seems to be on the rise for these ‘cram’ shops. No stream is sacred, no area untouched. Name an entrance exam and there is coaching available to help you ‘crack’ it. Engineering, medicine, management and civil services may be the more popular exams for which students undergo training, but think of any possible career, or the most obscure test, and chances are there will be some institute offering ‘training’ for it.
Even creative fields like art, where you would think coaching would be of little use, throw up a proliferation of trainers. Be it the prestigious National School of Design or, for that matter, even fashion designing, you can get coached for it. And it’s not just college and school going students who are the clients, even tiny-tots are in the net, getting ‘coached’ to make the right moves and noises to get admission into nursery classes of reputed schools.
BIG COSTS, LITTLE GUARANTEE
In the race to get ahead, everyone wants to maximise their potential, and this is where the coaching industry steps in. But none of this is easy on the purse; it comes at a substantial investment and with little or no guarantees of a positive outcome. One can even end up paying more in coaching fees than in expenses for the actual course one is preparing for. In fact, the amount spent on coaching and various affiliated needs may be higher than what they have to pay in terms of fees at, say, an IIT, which is about Rs 50,000 a year.
Students start training for engineering and medical entrance examinations from class XI onwards, sometimes earlier at class IX. While some go from bigger cities to training institutes in smaller places like Kota and Pala that have become coaching hubs, there is a parallel trend that sees students from small towns trudge to metros in search of better institutes.
Similarly, private tuitions at the school level are equally prohibitive. And, ironically, this sometimes happens when it is the same teacher holding forth both at the child’s school and tutorial. A number of such teachers double up as tutors after school hours — and going by the accounts of some of the students, teaching skills improve considerably in the latter. What is worrisome, though, is that some teachers penalise students in various ways for not availing of the tuition facility.
Though, in a certain way, coaching centres can be seen as something that helps break the hegemony of elite academic institutions by allowing access to students from humble backgrounds to better course material and training — thus allowing for a level-playing field — the high costs involved can put some of the same students at an immediate disadvantage, leading to further inequity in the system.
HYPER-DEMAND FUELS RACE
In all this, the hyper-demand for better learning ensures there is coaching even to get into some sought after coaching institutes which, in turn, hold their own examinations and screen students before admitting them. Just to give an idea in terms of numbers, the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination, one of the largest such exercises in the world, is taken by about 12 lakh students, 80 per cent of whom take some sort of coaching for it.
After engineering, it is the medical and management streams, along with civil services and tutorials for SAT and GRE (examinations required to study in the US), that garner the most number of students. There are several others forming a smaller part of the pie.
Matching the growing number of students in search of the ‘right’ coaching centre are the institutes, making it difficult for many to home in on the perfect ones. Compounding this are the blatantly false claims doing the rounds; students can never be too sure what they are getting into. In June this year, the battle between two Mumbai based institutes escalated so much that it reached the police. It happened after one of them put out an advertisement saying some students who had failed to clear entrance examinations after enrolling in other institutes (which they named) did so after being trained by them. In another case last year, two competing institutes training MBAs took their differences to the Advertising Council over false claims. Again, this year, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had to intervene and order an inquiry regarding claims made over the success of a 2009 IIT topper.
Students have few avenues for recourse in case anything goes wrong. More often than not they are asked to pay upfront for the entire duration of the session; they cannot change their mind midway and ask for a refund. Many talk about the interesting modus operandi some of these classes adopt. Through internal selection, they pick out the brighter students and form a separate class which is mentored and tutored by their best teachers.
The others, meanwhile, are taught by mediocre teachers who are mere graduates or have failed to clear the very examination they are tutoring others for. Though selective tutoring helps institutes raise their ‘success rate’, bringing in more numbers, the larger group of students suffers.
For teachers, at least a majority of them, it is a win-win situation. Many on an average make up to Rs 2, 000 an hour. The best among them are known to command a staggering Rs 5, 000 an hour. Teaching for 10 hours a day, that’s a neat package of Rs 50, 000 per day. But this pales in comparison to the money the institutes make from every batch that may have anywhere from 35 to 150 students. The market for civil services coaching - an exam in which around 1.5 lakh candidates from all over India appear - in only Delhi is estimated to be about Rs 100 crore with students paying Rs 30, 000-45, 000 for a three to five month course.
BASIC EDUCATION GAP
Problems notwithstanding, it is easy to see what drives this phenomenal bazaar - the yawning gap between the learning imparted through our basic education system and the level of entrance examinations. “We operate in the valley that has been formed between academic standards in the mainstream system and the competitive standard of entrance examinations of various professional courses,” says the head of a coaching institute.
Occasionally, there are voices of opposition against this parallel universe of education, protesting the larger principle of it and the way it operates and impacts the mainstream education system. Both government and educationists grumble about it and say things that suggest the monster will be tamed and regulated. But on the ground it remains business as usual.
In 2006, IIT-JEE — the joint entrance examination held for Indian Institutes of Technologies — changed its test pattern after it was felt that students were spending too much time in coaching classes and ignoring their class XI and XII examination, negatively impacting their chances for other avenues. It was also found that almost 70 per cent of students who cleared the IIT-JEE in 2005 had dropped a year or more. Faculty at IIT's added that students who qualified for these institutes were burnt out by the time they entered the class rooms due to the years of preparation, and did not eventually perform well.
Starting next year, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will ring in changes in the civil services exams that will reduce the importance of coaching by introducing an aptitude test instead of a subject-specific test.
But none of this seems to have made much of a dent on the coaching sector. True to its ‘shadowy’ character, it morphs and adapts accordingly, and continues to flourish. In anticipation of the UPSC change, coaching institutes have already started advertising and conducting classes for the aptitude test. They claim they can “bring out” the aptitude in students who don’t know “how to gauge it”. As for the JEE, the government is planning to increase the weightage given to performance of students in class XII. It is even considering an aptitude test for screening purposes before holding intense subject-specific exams.
NEED FOR REGULATION
But there is little else that is being done on the regulation front. Despite its formidable size and expanse, something that can bring the government good revenue, the sector functions mostly in an unregulated manner. The fact that these coaching shops do not qualify as educational institutions means they do not need to register with the government and can operate off the radar, unchecked and unquestioned. The government accepts it is concerned about the impact of this industry, but hasn’t done much.
Till such time that the concern translates into action, the world of shadow education will continue to attract in unending hordes students both desperate and ambitious, hoping for success in a new India that rewards like never before.
