Private Tuition- A boon or a burden?
Why do students need tuition?
What values does it add to the process of learning?
Does it mean that the teaching at the school is not effective?
Are the teachers of the school of inferior quality?
Is tuition a by-product of an exam oriented education system?
Can’t students excel without private tuition?
Has private tuition been opted as an easy way out for working parents?
Is individual attention not possible at schools?
Is private tuition a reason for a highly expensive education system?
Private tuition was born and grown with the formal education system in India. For decades, private tuition has been given by knowledgeable, qualified teachers who were not so fortunate to get into the formal education system due to various socio cultural economic reasons. It has been an unorganised segment with students of a local area getting served by a local teacher who would teach students in small groups. This helps them to give attention to the specific individual learning needs of each student and help them learn in a better way. At times, teachers at the schools also used to give private tuitions since they were not able to attend the learning needs of all the students, when they are in large groups of 40-70. Most of the parents used to have a thought that the public education system is not helping their children to excel in their studies. Though they would send their children to public schools they would also make sure that the students are getting the service of private tutors to cover up the short falls of government school education.
To a great extent the reason for the birth and rise of private tuition in India is the disbelief parents and students in the formal education system in India. There was also a preconceived notion that except government jobs, whatever government gives out of our tax money, be it the health care or the education, is of poor quality. Hence the middle class and above strata of the society always depend on private service providers for these services. They have their own reasons to believe so.
Some of the private tutors have become quite famous and have started attracting students from neighbouring areas. Some of them have become popular and sought after, to the extent that students used to join schools near their tuition centers with an intention to get coached by them for the exams, especially competitive exams such as NEET and GEE. Some tutors like Byju Raveendran of Byju’s classes used to take classes in large grounds with thousands of students attending his classes for different competitive exams.
Yes, the competitive exams and its popularity among students and parents is also a reason for the spread of private tuition. It is a fact that all the children born in India would consider medical and engineering entrance as their first choice of career. Only those who are incompetent go for other careers. This has resulted in a rat race to crack these exams. Private tutors found this as a golden opportunity to make money not in hundreds and thousands but in millions and trillions. This has given rise to private education companies giving highly competitive tuition services to students not just in a single city but throughout the nation by starting branches all over. They have the standardised methodology, content and learning approach. This has served as a business moat for them over others. Akash is an example.
Then there came the technology revolution. The rise of digital learning and online learning has started impacting private tuition. Some service providers with futuristic insights started investing in going digital. However, we can not say that till the first wave of COVID-19 digital/online learning as a concept was trying hard to make its presence felt and convince the entire education industry to shift from the traditional.
Then the COVID-19 happened. There was no option but to go online to keep the process of education happening. We can comfortably divide the history of education as ‘before covid’ and ‘after covid’ in a very convenient and distinct way. There was no question of adaptability,all had to adopt or step away so that those who can adapt would replace them. Private tuition industry also had no other option but to go online to keep the ball rolling. This has given a highly competitive advantage to the online and digital tuition providers who have launched their service and have been struggling to find their place. The paradigm shift is that what used to be a push product has overnight become a pull product, in hot demand in the market. Lot of new players have also emerged offering tuition services to the students who did not have access to local tutors due to the social distancing and other restrictions that came along with the spread of the pandemic.
Digital learning, online learning, online live learning, online classes, online live classes are used interchangeably in different contexts. It is important to understand the difference between these terms while discussing tuition going online.
Digital learning in a broad category covering all aspects of digitalisation of learning. Be it content being digitised and prerecorded courses being delivered in a downloadable or online platforms and the online classes facilitating the live interaction of students and teachers though an online medium such as Zoom or Google meet. The word online learning or e learning refers to the learning facilitated through the internet. Online classes essentially means the live or prerecorded classes delivered through the internet. Online live classes refers to teachers and students coming together in a virtual classroom and interacting as they do in a physical classroom. An appropriate use of all the methods mentioned facilitates great learning.
Private tutors have been relying on all these methods considering their expertise, viability and commitment to the cause. Most of them have produced digital content and made it accessible to students through a digital medium or as an online content. This gave them the advantage of selling the same content to millions and millions of students irrespective of the geography or national boundaries. As a business model, this proved to be a promising one and it also helped a lot of students who are visual learners to understand concepts in a easy and better way. The educators came up with innovative creative video content with the help of animations and other creative tools which resulted in a content overload in the internet. With the hit of COVID-19, all these private players have also started giving online classes using teachers. Most of them relayed on giving recorded classes that were more economical and made a lot of business sense. But there was a gap in bridging students and teachers and to manage the transition of learning from physical classrooms to online classrooms. The main drawback with the digital content and recorded classrooms was the absence of a teacher for the mitigation of doubts as and when they arise. Though they tried to provide alternatives by way of email, whats app and other modes of communication, it just did not serve the purpose fully.
Online live classes could address this concern to a great extent. The biggest advantage of online live classes is that there is a teacher present to facilitate learning. Tutors get to establish personal connection with the students, which is very important for learning. They interact, share thoughts , doubts and learn as they are in a real classroom. Digital content and recorded videos would certainly help as a supplementary method. However, someone to monitor the progress and someone to look up to is essential for learning. Moreover, online live classes is the right transition method for bringing students experience with the digital learning environment.
The founders of Learners Note, with its eighteen years of expertise and experience in providing technology service to the education industry found that the students and teachers need a reliable, affordable and superior online solution to sail through the difficult situation to make sure that they get quality education. Learners Note made sure that the learning methodology has to make online learning effective, fun and result oriented. They started off with compiling quality digital content available in online video and other platforms, to their surprise, their researchers and educators found a plethora of content. They reviewed everything in great detail and shortlisted the best suited based on the age, appropriateness and learning facilitation. Thus the learning app of Learners Note came out with the best of all the content available. The content was then enriched with question banks, previous year question papers online quizzes, to make learning more interactive.
However, this alone was not enough to serve the student-teacher community. There was a large pool of quality teachers looking forward to connecting to the needy students. There was also a large pool of students looking for good teachers. Learners Note then found a method to connect them in a secured environment. This has resulted in online live classes of Learners Note. Learners Note classes became so popular with the individual and small group classes offered. This has become an immediate hit in India and UAE. The students of UAE were desperately looking for a quality online solution to learn. Learners Note came up with the right teachers, right platform, right content and right service with a vision to help students get the best. Hundras of students enrolled for the online tuition classes of Learners Note and are quite happy and satisfied with the quality of teachers given to them. Companies such as learners Note are creating a new saga in the digital learning industry with a focus on creating sustainable models. We can confidently say that with such efforts online tuition services will add a lot of value in education.
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