Students make beeline for coaching centres

VIJAYAWADA: Students who passed Intermediate during the Covid-19 pandemic make a beeline to private and corporate coaching centres to prepare for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test NEET and JEE examinations scheduled to be held next year.

Compared to previous years, the number of students opted for coaching centres has reportedly witnessed a three-fold rise.There is heavy rush in coaching centres in cities, with majority of them preferring centres in Nellore, Vijayawada, Guntur in AP as well as Hyderabad of Telangana.

Due to the COVID pandemic, all the students who applied for the SSC examination were declared passed in 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years. All of them attended online classes at that time. The same candidates passed their Intermediate first year during 2020-21 in the same manner, without proper classroom education. Of them, only 61  percent of students or 2,58,449 candidates cleared the intermediate second year exams.According to experts, lack of classroom education has affected the majority of students academically.   

Though a record number of students wrote NEET and JEE exams in 2022, not many students from the State cracked them. With this, several parents reportedly enrolled their children in private coaching centres.  

Speaking to TNIE, Billa Mahesh, from Vedayapalem, Nellore, whose son Surendra passed SSC and also Intermediate first year without writing  examinations, said his son passed Intermediate second year with low marks. Though he appeared for NEET-2002, the performance was not up to the mark.  Hence, before the results were announced, Mahesh enrolled his son in a corporate coaching centre, by paying a hefty fee.  
As the demand has increased, the private coaching centres are allegedly collecting hefty fees from students.M Mukesh, a government employee, from Vijayawada,  said that his daughter Yamini completed her SSC in 2020 and Intermediate first year in 2021 and second year in 2022.

As her performance in NEET 2022 was not up to mark due to lack of classroom education, he approached a coaching centre to join her, but the management has demanded Rs 2.5 lakh for the nine month-coaching.