Recently, the Chinese government announced a bold, sweeping and almost draconian crackdown on its booming educational tuitions sector. Under the new policy, private tutoring businesses have to restructure as non-profit companies. They are banned from being listed on the stock market or raise foreign capital. They are prohibited from offer tutoring classes on weekends and school holidays. Parents and students are being encouraged to report schools and teachers who make extra income through private tutoring.
The consequences were immediate. Shares of many Chinese Edtech companies listed abroad crashed, losing value worth tens of billions of dollars or lakhs of crores. Many of these companies are staring at bankruptcy.
China is no yardstick for policy making for India. It isn’t a democracy, and a blatant ban like this that destroys major corporations overnight doesn’t augur well for investor sentiment.
And yet, we in India need to acknowledge that the over emphasis on tuitions is an issue here as well. While the Chinese solution (an outright ban or going after teachers) is not the best one, the underlying problem exists in India too.
We drive our kids insane. We make them compete for exams that do not test true talent and operate like a lottery in terms of selections. Also, there’s an increasing advantage children of rich households have when it comes to signing up for extra classes and tutorials.
This isn’t a new issue. Tuition classes have existed in India for decades. I remember my own childhood. I, along with other kids, would sit around the dining table of a neighborhood aunty, who would cut carrots and other root vegetables for dinner as she helped middle school students solve square roots.
Except now, things are radically different. The carrot cutting aunty was a tiny enterprise, where she essentially helped us focus to do our homework.
Today, education companies are massive. Even in India, there are many with billion dollar plus valuations. They use technology to gain scale and can enter literally every household in India. They market with national campaigns. They could soon institutionalize and make tuitions mainstream to a point where the same Chinese tuition madness happens here.
All parents will feel pressured to get their children ‘extra’ help. School is no longer enough. School teachers aren’t sufficient. Expert tutors connected through an app will become a requirement rather than a choice. We already had a Kota factory phenomenon. Move Kota to your phone screen, and soon you will have a national tuition pandemic (maybe we already have one.)
Children will finish school and spend several hours on tuitions to keep up their marks. Gone are the evenings spent playing in the parks or relaxing on weekends.
Sport, musical instruments, dramatics, art, elocutions, debates – anything that doesn’t come in entrance tests or board exams will be cut out.
Indian parents are aashirwaad-giving mercenaries. They will push their children, make them surrender their childhoods to get those two extra marks. The same two marks that often decide where you will end up in life.
We already have 100% cutoffs in some Delhi University colleges. What’s the difference in abilities of a student who gets a 98% vs 100%? Why the hell are we doing this to our students?
The argument that competition is good, and the struggle of students will bring out our best doesn’t hold here. Students are slaving over an unproductive task – just get a few extra marks. The time spent to score 99 instead of 97 in Physics could have been used to learn a completely new skill, which will make them more employable and contribute more to the economy. However, in the Great Indian Mad Student Race, there’s no time to think about these things. And now with billions of dollars in capital and tech backing it, yes, we are looking at a tuition pandemic.
Apart from driving children insane, private tuitions harm in other ways. They take away the level playing field for Indian students. Many of these tuitions cost in lakhs. How many Indians can afford that? And if those who get tuitions get an edge to get in while others don’t, what is our education system testing? How rich your parents are?
The solution is not in banning mega educational companies. That’s absurd. Also, that attacks supply of tuitions, but does nothing about the huge demand for it. And if there’s demand, Indian parents will find a way to circumvent the law and give their child the edge.
Here are some solutions. One, we need to make a cultural shift. We must let our children breathe. There are professions other than engineering and medicine, really. If you are excellent at anything, you will get somewhere in life. We also need more good colleges. Why haven’t we able to open more universities with the same reputation as Delhi University? Why do new Ed-tech startups worth billions continue to come up, while there’s almost no new reputable universities? The issue is regulations, which are messed up when it comes to opening colleges. No reputable person wants to open one, and many shady guys have entered the field. Incentivize good people to open colleges, grant prime land and create more world-class institutions. Take the pressure off the cut-offs and entrance exams.
Third, while a ban is incorrect, we will need to regulate the mushrooming educational startups. Many of these companies provide excellent services, such as making people job ready, upgrading skillsets or teaching people different vocations. All that is fine. However, the fear is that the madness of Indian parents will eventually turn these Edtech companies into tuition factories, for that is all many Indian parents would pay for. We need to regulate the sector to ensure that doesn’t happen.
China’s need to do a massive crackdown like this shows how the tuition obsession combined with tech can go too far. We need to fix this here before it gets too late.