Coaching centres with over 20 students to be made accountable: Govt

KEY STORY

• The Delhi government is trying to take its first steps towards bringing the city’s sprawling private coaching and tuitions sector under regulations, to be drawn by its education department.

• The capital is home to several coaching centre hubs for entry to civil services, chartered accountancy (CA), company secretary (CS), banking services, engineering and medical courses, and various government jobs, with Mukherjee Nagar, Kalu Sarai, Karol Bagh, Laxmi Nagar, Munirka and Rajinder Nagar attracting students from across the country. There are also a large number of after-school tuition classes for children.

• In a new notice asking all individuals and organizations running coaching institutes or centres with more than 20 students to register with it, the education department has referred to this as a “parallel education system”.

“Private coaching institute/centres, imparting pre-admission coaching to students for admission into medical/engineering or any other professional courses or pre-examination coaching for securing government or private jobs… or coaching/tuition of any subject taught at secondary or senior secondary school examination level, are growing rapidly in Delhi.

• Students from all over India come to the city for preparation of such examinations and seek admission in private coaching centres.

• These institutions are running as a parallel education system and are still out of the ambit of any regulation and running without any statutory compliances leading to serious hazards to the student.

• The government of NCT of Delhi is very much concerned to safeguard the interests of such students already enrolled or desirous to enroll into such coaching institutes in Delhi,” the notice read.

• Yogesh Pal Singh, assistant director of education in the education department’s private school branch, said the government does not yet know how many coaching centres there are in the city and the first priority in framing guidelines for them is to ensure the safety of students studying in them.

“It is likely that there are thousands of such institutes but they are not under the ambit of any proper regulations. Last year, we had seen a tragedy like the fire at a coaching centre in Surat, in which 22 children died.

• So we are trying to collect data on the basis of which we can frame policy for regulating them, in which the priority will be that they follow safety norms such as having fire safety certificates. There are other concerns such as students being cheated but those will be addressed at a later stage,” he said.

• Starting Thursday, all coaching centres with more than 20 students will have to register themselves on the education’s department website and provide information such as their complete address, land area, land status, faculty qualifications, fee structure, number of students and basic facilities before November 14.