The word tuition and coaching in the Indian/Bengali context comes with a value judgement attached. That’s just how it is. And now, no matter how organised the sector is getting, how good the “strike rates”, or how many crores the turnover, the coaching centres are not exempt from this brow knitting.

The tutors who drive these institutions — give one coaching centre an edge over the others — remain largely invisible. Not too many people seem to know who they are or how they work.

Diptarka Ghosh is a tutor with one of the big brands. He has done his MTech in structural dynamics from IIT Roorkee and has even had a taste of corporate culture when he worked with Larsen & Toubro for some years.

Four years ago, Ghosh joined the coaching industry. He is aware that his choice of career is not conventional. His father is a college professor, one of the uncles works at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Ghosh says, “I don’t see any problem with my choice. It is a good job, I am competent and the pay is lucrative. If you are good, you can make four to five lakhs a month.”

Why won’t someone like him consider teaching in a school? “They won’t pay us as much, will they?” he replies. And for a second, he seems offended, by whatever residual value judgement the question may have come loaded with.

Coaching trends differ according to geography and subculture. Trends change with time. Ghosh says, “In Bengal, repeater batches are not common. In Delhi, till some years ago, it was common to have students of Class VI enrol. In some other cities, they start joining coaching centres once they are in Class VII or VIII. In the South, it is usually later.” Repeater batch is the name for batches of students who drop a year after the Class XII boards to prepare for the engineering exam or the medical entrance or both.

Coaching centres are expensive. Parents pay anything between three and four lakhs for modules spread over two years. Ghosh says, “That does not mean we who teach in coaching centres are mercenaries.” He talks about the rigour of a coach, how one draws on the same books that school teachers refer to, uses the same methods.

On the day of this interview he was up at 5am, prepped for his class till 8.30am, then taught advanced physics to a class of 47 from 9am to 12 noon. He says, “I work 12 to 13 hours a day.”

His argument is that the remuneration necessitates the effort, but he also admits that the effort decides the remuneration. The measure of the effort is “student
satisfaction”.

And student satisfaction is apparently not just the scores they get but also how a coach engages with his class, the level of comfort students feel, the kind of respect and attention one can command. Ghosh says, “There are other things, one has to be presentable, flexible...”

Most institutes evaluate coaches after a fixed period, which is usually three to six months. From what Ghosh says, the performance assessment directly translates into remuneration added or nicked.

The takeaway is something like this — coaching centres are a world unto themselves, with their own rules and targets. Policies and even politics have created this demand. The market is still experimenting.

Will coaching centres replace schools in the long run? Or will dummy schools swallow them up in the end and we will be back to square one?