Students attend a private coaching class in the city. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Jan. 24: Parents nowadays consider private tuition to be more of a necessity than secondary support for their children’s studies.

Most parents believe only private tuition can give their children the best education possible. Better even, if the private teacher is from the school where their children study.

Rajiv, the father of a Class V child in a reputed school, said: “The education provided in the school is not enough for my child. Whenever I go through his exercise book, I find even wrong things marked as correct.” Rajiv added: “How can we expect the teacher to teach correctly who does not know the things himself/herself?”

“It seems the teacher intentionally shows mistakes in the students’ copies so that the guardians are left with no choice but to send their children to private tuitions,” said another parent Bhavna. Her daughter studies in a good school though not a very reputed one. Another parent, Amit Verma, said: “The teachers are so bad at spellings that my wife who has limited education but is a voracious reader, can detect mistakes in what they write.” Verma’s child studies in a reputed school.

A teacher said around 80 per cent students attend private tuitions. In fact, students too do not want to take any sort of risk by not joining one.

On the other hand, Shivesh Prakash, a teacher in Delhi Public School, said: “Tuitions are not at all important if a child is taught properly at school. Some teachers do this for additional income.”

Many teachers from reputed schools teach students of other schools too. Since these teachers are associated with a good school, their fees are higher compared to those from “not so good” schools. On an average, they teach three days in a week. The fee of these teachers range from Rs 400 to Rs 3,000.

Arpita, a student of Class VII, said: “My teacher says parents feel relaxed after getting the child admitted in a good school. They forget that tuition is as necessary as a reputed school.”

Even more surprising is the fact that some parents consider tuitions a foolproof method of ensuring high marks for the child. Sources said many of them feel that if the child takes tuitions from the same schoolteacher, he will score better marks.

Not only this, some parents rush to the teacher’s house if the child scores poor marks or fails in a particular subject. They are often seen carrying fruits, sweets and gifts for the teacher.