Assam Sees High Dependence on Private Tuition Among School Students

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: On an average, 41 per cent of school students in the urban areas and 27.6 per cent in the rural areas in Assam depend on private tuition. On the contrary, the average percentage of students depending on private tuition is 27 at the all-India level.

This startling revelation is indicative of the fact that students and their guardians are relying less on the standard of school teaching in Assam.

According to the National Sample Survey, 2025, parents prefer private schools to government schools for enrolling their wards. This trend is applicable even in the rural areas, let alone the urban areas in the country.

According to the survey, at the secondary level in rural Assam, 40 per cent of male and 52 per cent of female students depend on private tuition, against 63 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively, in the urban areas in the state.

The state government has undoubtedly improved school infrastructure in the state in the past few years. It is, however, still standardising the quality of teaching to that extent, and that might have its fallout on the dependence on private tuition.

The Asom Rajyik Prathamik Shiskhak Sanmilani (ARPSS) reports that the government engages teachers in as many as 60 non-teaching activities, such as election duty and census duty, in addition to their teaching responsibilities. This practice has its cascading effects on the teaching and learning process in schools in the state.

This practice is one of the reasons why parents in rural areas also prefer enrolling their wards in private schools over government schools. Since most of the guardians in rural areas are not well equipped to teach their wards studying in English-medium schools, they have to rely on private tuition.

Sources in the Education Department feel that the state has several government schools with satisfactory enrolment and excellent performance in results, which makes parents rush to enrol their children. They, however, feel that most of the government schools cannot maintain quality teaching to their students, leading to even zero performance in the HSLC (High School Leaving Certificate) examinations. This is one of the reasons why guardians of students incline to private schools.

A retired teacher of a private school said, "It's a wrong notion that all private schools impart quality education to their students. There are several private schools where the standard of teaching is subpar. Some parents mistakenly believe that the quality of teaching in private schools is always high. To make their wards cope with the syllabi, parents engage private tutors. This practice has led to a rapid increase in private coaching centres in the state.

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