Higher education opportunities are opening up dramatically, with new-age courses and programmes being introduced on every other campus.

There, however, remains a question mark over how equipped the boards of secondary and higher secondary education are to meet the requirements of competitive tests, such as the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the gateway to India?s premier tech institutes.

Dinesh Kumar Goel, founder chairman and chief mentor of FIITJEE (Forum for IITJEE), a supplementary education service provider, aims to correct the anomaly.

?There has to be academic excellence in schools, so that a school-going student does not have to depend upon outside sources, such as coaching centres. A school teacher should raise his capacity to explain a subject,? feels Goel.

So, Goel and his team have worked out two initiatives, Ascent Plus and Pinnacle, to help students in classes IX to XII cope with their school curriculum as well as the curriculum of competitive examinations such as JEE, Olympiads and National Talent Search Programmes.

While Ascent Plus deals with students in classes IX and X, preparing them for the Plus II-level science subjects, Pinnacle is for the science students of classes XI and XII.

?We have tied up with several schools, where our own faculty will take classes during school hours and prepare the students accordingly. They will teach both the school syllabus as well as the curriculum of the competitive exams,? explains Goel.

?Our aim is to do away with the system of coaching centres, which we feel does more harm than good, as students in classes XI and XII choose to concentrate on competitive exams more than on their board curriculum,? points out Goel.

The Centre?s decision to change the JEE format has not gone down well with Goel.

?Bringing down the format to the secondary level is ridiculous. This will result in the dilution of the quality of students sitting for admission into India?s most exclusive and highly-rated tech institutes, the IITs,? asserts Goel.