The significant imbalance between the rise of coaching centers and the rapidly declining rate of students enrolled in higher classes at English-medium schools in Bangladesh is an issue of growing concern. This phenomenon has somehow become a trend among English-medium students. Due to peer pressure or influence from their senior classmates, the majority of students quit school in the middle of their studies.
Some students leave school after completing year 7, while the rest leave after year 8, and they complete their O and A-levels through coaching centers. They are more inclined to follow in the footsteps of their peers or comply with the trend. This is pointedly detrimental to a child’s future, as this act diminishes the purpose of attending school in shaping young minds to their utmost potential. Instead, students pass through an alluring shortcut with just the purpose of obtaining good grades. The transition of students between schools and coaching centers must be ostracized.
The policymakers and educators of our country must develop an effective policy to eradicate this harmful tendency in our educational system as soon as possible. Coaching centers are solely established to maximize profit by generating revenue through each student. They view each student as a transaction, and their teaching method moves like a business strategy: teaching a dozen different topics to a hundred or 50 children and immersing them in a plethora of information, which might be quite difficult for many students to grasp quickly. They have a limited period, an unlimited number of students, and a rather sturdy and robust approach to the syllabus in hand. This range of demerits helps to highlight some very essential points. Lack of personal care and attention towards each student is deduced as a vital problem. They lack time or desire to incorporate other crucial aspects of subject and ethical values in each student, which is opposite to the school system. They remain solely a medium through which half-prepared students pass to brush up on their knowledge and comply with the trend in anticipation of obtaining good results. Often, the repercussions of leaving school are greatly felt by the students, as they don’t achieve the desired results.
Moreover, coaching centers fail to provide the recognition and acknowledgment that a school is likely to provide its students. This trend notably reduces the individuality and utmost capability of each student. The emptyness in classrooms throughout many schools of the city echoes the void in the students, who failed to unlock their maximum potential by choosing coaching centers as their path forward. The personal care and soulful bond one shares with a school teacher, the way they see a child develop, never happens with teachers of coaching centers. Students must consciously acknowledge the vital role of school teachers in their path to success. They must be able to analyze the situation and dissect the demerits of the situation. School teachers are equally and more devoted to and trained to teach particular subjects comprehensively to their students. They don’t lack these skills, and they are more aware of a student’s background and capability to alter the curriculum accordingly. On the other hand, coaching centers are heavily reliant on marketing strategies like word-of-mouth advertising and the utmost assurance of high grades to parents and children through effective manipulation or the art of persuasion. Students should grasp this issue with objectivity and rationality, resisting the urge to follow the trend.
The grass is greener on the other side, an idiom that is befitting to apply to this phenomenon. Students are drawn in masses towards these centers due to the alluring appeal of perfection and the effective psychological marketing strategies they implement. These strategies are implemented to create a ruse and lure in as many students and revenue as possible. This, in turn, decreases the proportion of students at the secondary level, leading to decreasing wage rates for teachers at school. The main issue for parents and students to understand is that a child’s grade is not related to the number of years they do coaching, stay at school, or leave school. Instead, a student’s performance depends mainly on four factors: their ability to absorb knowledge, their ability to comprehend, their determination, and their effort.
