The Rise of the Coaching Classroom
In many parts of India today, the academic day no longer ends with the school bell. Students step out of their classrooms only to walk straight into coaching centres, their evenings consumed by lectures, tests, and revision schedules. In cities like Kota, Sikar, Hyderabad, Delhi, and even smaller district towns, entire localities function around coaching timetables. Hostels, mess facilities, and libraries cater not to college students, but to teenagers preparing for entrance examinations still years away.
This growing dependence on coaching reflects a widespread belief that formal schooling alone is no longer sufficient. For a student in Class IX or X, especially one aiming for engineering or medical entrances, joining a coaching institute is often seen as inevitable. Schools, in this arrangement, risk becoming secondary spaces—places to complete attendance requirements rather than centres of meaningful learning. The authority of the classroom teacher is gradually replaced by the perceived expertise of the coaching instructor.
When Education Becomes a Market
The coaching industry thrives on visibility and perception. Billboards, newspaper advertisements, social media posts, and celebratory banners flood public spaces, showcasing the success of a select few. When two or three toppers emerge from an institute, their photographs are enlarged, laminated, and displayed repeatedly across cities. Their names become brands, projected as proof of institutional excellence.
What remains unspoken is the experience of the many others who studied in the same classrooms, followed the same schedules, and invested equal effort. These students walk past the same hoardings every day, confronted with a reminder of exclusion rather than inspiration. Their absence from public celebration quietly reinforces the idea that effort without rank has little value. In this marketplace of success, recognition is selective, and silence surrounds those who fall outside the narrow frame of achievement.
Who Is Actually Winning?
This reality raises a deeper and more unsettling question: in this system, who is actually winning—students or coaching institutes? While a small fraction of students secure top ranks, coaching centres almost always emerge as consistent winners. Their revenues expand, their branches multiply, and their brands grow stronger year after year. Even failure feeds the system, as students are encouraged to re-enrol, repeat courses, or join advanced batches with the promise that one more attempt will bring success.
For students, however, the outcome is far less predictable. Years of disciplined effort may still end without selection, leaving behind financial strain, emotional fatigue, and damaged self-confidence. When institutions profit steadily while students shoulder the risks of uncertainty, education begins to resemble a commercial wager rather than a nurturing process of learning.
Government Schools and the Absence of Real Choice
It is also important to acknowledge a harsh reality: many students turn to coaching not out of ambition, but compulsion. Government schools across large parts of India continue to struggle with inadequate infrastructure, teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, and limited exposure to competitive examination patterns. While dedicated teachers exist within the system, they are often constrained by rigid curricula, administrative burdens, and lack of resources.
For students studying in such environments, coaching becomes less a privilege and more a necessity. Without access to conceptual teaching, regular assessment, or guidance aligned with national-level exams, students feel they have no real alternative. Coaching institutes step into this vacuum, offering what schools are unable to provide. In this sense, the coaching boom is not merely a private-sector phenomenon but a reflection of long-standing public-sector neglect.
The Psychological Cost on Young Minds
The emotional consequences of this culture are visible in everyday student life. Consider a sixteen-year-old preparing for a medical entrance examination while still attending school. Her day begins before sunrise and ends late at night, divided between school hours, coaching lectures, practice tests, and self-study. Weekly rankings determine not only academic standing but emotional stability. A minor dip in scores can trigger deep self-doubt, while improvement brings only temporary relief before the next evaluation cycle begins.
Such routines leave little space for rest, friendships, or creative exploration. Over time, students internalise the belief that exhaustion is proof of commitment and that anxiety is a necessary companion to ambition. Emotional distress becomes normalised, while seeking help is often misunderstood as weakness.
Parents Caught Between Hope and Pressure
Parents, too, find themselves caught in this cycle. In a society where education is viewed as the safest route to stability and respect, opting out of coaching feels like an irresponsible risk. A father working overtime to afford coaching fees believes he is securing his child’s future. A mother constantly reminding her child of the money spent does so not out of harshness, but fear—fear that the opportunity might be wasted.
Gradually, academic pressure enters domestic spaces. Conversations at home revolve around test scores, ranks, and comparisons. The home, ideally a place of reassurance, begins to mirror the competitive atmosphere of coaching centres, leaving students with little emotional refuge.
Coaching as a Symptom, Not the Disease
It would be misleading to place the blame entirely on coaching institutes. Their dominance reflects deeper structural problems within the education system. Overcrowded classrooms, limited individual attention, outdated teaching methods, and an excessive focus on rote learning have weakened trust in formal schooling. At the same time, entrance examinations demand speed, analytical ability, and conceptual depth—creating a gap that coaching institutes promise to bridge.
For some students, especially those from under-resourced schools, coaching does provide exposure and academic discipline. The concern arises when such access depends primarily on financial capacity, turning merit into a function of affordability.
Rethinking Success and Reforming Education
The coaching culture is sustained by a narrow idea of success that glorifies engineering, medicine, and a few government jobs while sidelining arts, sports, and vocational paths. Many students are pushed into careers that neither match their abilities nor inspire them.
Reform must address both education systems and social attitudes. Schools—particularly government schools—need stronger funding, better teaching support, and fairer assessment, while society must learn to value diverse talents and dignified livelihoods.
Coaching may continue to exist, but it must not dominate young lives. Education should nurture curiosity, confidence, and resilience, not reduce learning to ranks and fear.
Finding the Right Balance
India’s coaching culture exists because it fills real gaps left by an unequal education system, especially where government schools struggle to deliver quality learning. For many students, coaching is not a choice but a necessity. Yet, when this necessity turns into an industry that thrives on fear, celebrates only a few, and exhausts the many, the purpose of education is compromised.
The answer lies not in blaming students or banning coaching, but in rebuilding trust in schools, reforming examinations, and widening our idea of success. Education should support aspiration, not monetise anxiety. Until that balance is restored, coaching will remain both a solution—and a problem—at the same time.
The writer is a published writer in daily leading newspapers of J&K and an Independent Researcher. He can be contacted at shahidhakla360@gmail.com
