The recent announcement by the Higher Education Ministry of Odisha to ban private tuition given by teachers is a very quixotic one. It is a hard choice to make at a time when the quality of teaching in the schools and colleges are facing the challenges in many ways.
It is not that the private tuition are any new thing. It had been there earlier also and timeless in a way.
But, it has reached a stage where it can be seen the fence eating the crop. Reason is simple.
It is the proclivity of the teachers going out for the extra buck, even in the case of teachers who are paid a princely salary. For teachers working at low salaries like Rs.20,000 or so, their quest for an extra income is comprehensible. But the real situation is not that.
It is rather the predisposition part with the teachers who, from day one, try cajoling students and parents for private tuition or be a part of the larger tutorial classes.
A fear-mongering situation get created by teachers to make a student believe that, why he or she needs a tuition.
A fear is drill-holed into the student’s psyche that where he suffers from a certain weakness thus, allowing the same to creep into the parents’ mind.
Although these kind of things mushroom from the side lines of events like teachers-parent meet or at any social gathering but, the impact of the teachers’ pitch earns the tonality strong enough to drive someone to a state of para normality.
So, there the buck stops. Someone who refuses to give the children the tuition is often made to realise that, the child comes under the grip of complex.
Even difference in the marks given to students taking tuition and not taking tuition are noticeable.
What is paramount that, the class room teachings need to be good enough so that a student, as much possible, can avoid the crutches of a private tuition.
Over the last two decades or so, the education policy makers have failed to see that the learning levels in schools or colleges have gone consistently low and suffered declines. And which is more in government run schools.
But the pity is that, in schools or colleges, those normally can be afforded by students from affluent families, there also the teachers are not free from the extra-buck greed.
That way the private tuition become necessary, although a necessary evil for some. But often it pays on certain subjects.
