Tuitionpur

At 6am, Durgapur’s City Centre is already abuzz. Buses come in one after another from Benachity, Asansol, Andal, Borjora. Uniformed students with backpacks get off and head for the parked autos that ferry them another one kilometre, drop them off in front of the tall buildings with audacious facades. This is a special auto service for select timings and available only to students at discounted fares. Some SUVs too screech to a halt, girls in uniform alight with a guardian hovering behind.

City Centre, which constitutes a five-kilometre-stretch, is home to a handful of big coaching centres and several smaller ones. The big guys offer coaching to those preparing for the IITs or the medical entrance test or both. The smaller ones cater to those preparing for CUET, CLAT, banking exams, the Olympiads... Someone says the MAMC (Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation) guesthouse has become a coaching centre for the civil service exams.

The bigger the brand, the taller the building they operate out of. Standing at the gates of one such institute all one can see is the parking lot inside — it is full of cycles. The students enter through those gates and are lost to the world outside for the next eight hours.

With them gone, the rest of the landscape leaps to the eye. There are posters screaming scooties on rent. Others read — rooms on rent, beds on rent... Anusuya Gayen, a schoolteacher who lives in Sagarbhanga, says, “In Fuljhore, in Mamrabazar, in areas closer to the bus stand and railway station, you will see ‘To Let’ written on the wall of every other house. There are PGs, messes and shared rooms available.” More such posters are stuck on the back of totos and autos, on lamp posts, even on the walls of public urinals.

There are small eateries all around selling sandwiches, rolls, momos, thalis. Student-friendly portions, student-friendly prices. At 1 in the afternoon once the first shift ends, these come alive.

“Earlier, students would go to school and come to us to clear doubts. Now, tuition teachers pick up where the coaching centres have left off,” says Narayan Chandra Akhuli, who runs a private tuition centre in Andal, 14 kilometres from Durgapur.

Andal is where the airport is; it became operational in 2015. Researcher Souvik Modak talks about the improved connectivity of Durgapur the last some years. He says, “Before, there was just the train service, but now road connectivity is vastly improved. Students come from Bankura, Birbhum, Jharkhand.” Satorupa Das, who is a teacher at RE College Model School, adds, “They come from Raniganj, Asansol, Dhanbad...” Also from Burdwan East, Krishnanagar, Murshidabad. A handful of students from Calcutta too.

Mita Mukherjee, who teaches in a government school, points out that the job scene in Durgapur is not what it used to be; many ancillary companies have shut shop. She says, “Recently, after the Higher Secondary exams got over many of these boys left for Jharkhand in search of jobs. We had to call them up and urge them to come back and appear for the practicals.” Many students from this social orbit drop out after Class VIII or IX, join the catering business.

Students who flock to the coaching centres belong to a different financial strata. Those who can afford a car, those who can rent a place and even move the family to Durgapur, if need be. It is Mukherjee who points out that post Covid, the health sector here is flourishing. Associated professionals are prospering.

Das says, “Being good in studies does not always equal to doing well in exams. But everything is exam oriented these days. The exams themselves have OMR-oriented questions with multiple choices, while schools are more focused on the basics.” She adds, “Parents want a solution and coaching centres seem to offer it.”

Binoy Sen, a student of Class X, goes to school in Bankura where attendance is compulsory. But he has been coming to Durgapur just for the weekends the past two years to attend coaching classes. His parents have taken a room on rent in Benachity. Nandan Deb, a student of Class XI, commutes between Dhanbad and Durgapur. He says, “There are plenty of trains. Also, it is cheaper than renting a place for the whole month.” Coaching centres are expensive but it seems there are discounts for top performers.

Das says, “It is natural that the coaching centres should choose Durgapur, after all, it always had an education market.”

Indeed, even in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a robust culture of tuition. One knew by word of mouth which teacher taught which subject well, and within a certain stream which chapter — thermodynamics or light or calculus. You could tell the science tutors apart from their humanities counterparts just by a count of slippers left at the door. Many of these tutors were retired professors who had settled down in Recol Park.

Das continues, “It does not matter that many schools here shut shop in the last decade. The lekha-pora culture is in the air and soil of Durgapur, only now turned into a fanatic zeal of parents to make engineers and doctors out of their children.” Most of the educators The Telegraph interviewed said that while coaching centres have been raising their heads here since 2012-13, the pandemic gave a boost to the business.

For every old school that has closed down or merged, several newer ones have sprung up. In 2023, the West Bengal government had announced the closure of 8,207 primary and secondary schools with fewer than 30 students. The reasons were reported to be “financial unviability and the need to optimise resources in the education sector”. The traditional schools are a stickler for attendance, but that’s not the case with the newer ones. They are affiliated to any one board of education — HS or ISC or CBSE — and also work in tandem with the coaching centres.

Adrish Sen was studying in Bankura. After three months when he realised the syllabus was “all over the place”, he moved to Durgapur, enrolled in a “dummy school” and joined coaching classes. He says, “My tuition teachers are highly qualified, either ex-IITians or ex-NITians.” Sunidhi Guin, a student of Class X, says, “I attend a mix of online and offline coaching classes.” By way of explanation, her friend Arpita Pal adds, “One centre is excellent for physics, another for maths.”

It is 2.30pm. Outside Junction Mall at City Centre, there is a crowd of students waiting for their coaching class to begin. Says one boy, “Today we have a test.” He puffs a cigarette and adds, “I will have to pay extra if I perform badly. Last year I could not get into IIT.”

Not the end of the world, but who’s going to tell him?

SENTINELS OF THE PAST 

Here are some of the schools of Durgapur, once reputed for their teaching standards, now closed.