If the government is serious about stopping coaching centres from fleecing students and parents in the name of preparing them for competitive exams, they must upgrade syllabi, say experts.
If the syllabi is brought on par with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) with exams such as Joint Entrance Exams (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) in mind, and college teachers help students, coaching centres will be rendered irrelevant.
Experts point out that most applicants who clear competitive exams come from central boards and this is because they follow the NCERT syllabus. "For national level exams such as NEET and JEE, students from state boards need to study concepts from NCERT textbooks which are not prescribed by the state board," pointed out Subhash Joshi, Trustee, Science Parivar.
The Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research, Pune (Balbharati) has taken steps in this direction and revised the Class X syllabus this year and will soon revise the syllabus of Class XI and XII simultaneously.
"Apart from revising syllabi," said Ramesh Deshpande, vice-principal of Bhavan's College in Andheri (Mumbai), "the government should come up with a program that will encourage junior college teachers to prepare students for competitive exams and not just teach them state board syllabus."
Maharashtra government took an ambitious step in this direction last year and set up an online portal through the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) to prepare students for competitive exams such as JEE and NEET that had only multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Teachers and subject experts were asked to send questions for the website. However, it didn't turn out to be helpful as the state didn't see the exercise through.
"My daughter appeared for NEET this year," says Ruiee Kapoor, a parent, "The website that our state board made for students was extremely basic. It should have been up much before students start preparing themselves. Also, it is about time the government implemented the one nation, one syllabus concept."
