The malady of tuitions

Hyderabad: With the prices of modern private education shooting through the roof and correspondingly its quality apparently dropping, parents are increasingly investing in tuitions. Any well known primary school charges an annual fee of atleast Rs 40,000 for primary education. Adding to this expense is the cost of the books, stationary and transport, biting away a major chunk of parents’ salaries.

Throwing money at problems has definitely not allayed the situation for parents, who complain of lack of wholesome education. With the head count increasing by the year in each school, a teacher’s concentration now has more and more bidders. And here tuitions step in to fill the gap between a student and his racing curriculum. Or so it is believed.

Many individual tuition points have mushroomed in the city. Bhavani, the parent of a 3rd standard student stresses that she is not happy with the quality of education her son is receiving. “My son is studying in one of the best schools of the city but his level of knowledge for his age is not satisfactory”. She has now decided to invest Rs 10,000 per annum in tuitions to help her son cope with the burden of his studies.

“If we do not send our children to tuitions, they cannot race competently with their classmates, which only adds to their mental agony”, says Ramakrishna, the father of a 2nd standard student Ramya. The Principal of DAV Public School, Sita Kiran, however condemns this though process.“Sending a child to tuition has become a matter of prestige for parents. Most mothers do not have the patience to sit with their kids and help them with their activities.

By doing so, not only do they deny children their rightful nurturing environment, but also hurt their feelings. Very few young mothers who understand the need of bonding participate with their children in their overall development. Others blame schools” she rues, adding that it not only increasing the gap between the mother and child but also makes the relationship a formal one.

Most of the time, tuitions merely aid children in completing their homework. “Almost 60 per cent of the kids who enroll here do so to get help with homework”, claims Madhavi, who holds tuition classes in A S Rao Nagar.

Working parents often lament that their busy schedule does not allow them time to oversee their child’s routine. They take the help of tuitions to get the extra help they need. A few others whine that kids never study or do their home work at home even after being insisted and that they are left with no option but to send them to tuitions, where they can finish their homework and also study.

Radhika Acharya, a practicing psychologist, opines that even though there is evident drop in the quality of school education, parents often use that as an excuse to unload their responsibility to third parties. “Also most home makers are not competent and skilled enough to tutor their own children”.

She stresses that the priority of parents should be to inculcate emotional and social skills in their children rather than merely concentrating on numerical results. “It has become a fad among parents to direct their children’s primary education towards competitive studies. But what they do not realise is that even graduates of premier institutes end up with severe psychological disorders.” She stresses that elders need to plan their parenting like they would their careers and financials.

By:Vaishnavi Girish