THE INVISIBLE BUT OMNIPRESENT EDUCATION MAFIA (08/04/2014)

The decision to include the class XII Board marks through rationalization, for preparation of the final merit list of IITJEE was taken with the aim to cut down the role of private coaching institutions who had thoroughly commercialized one of the most honoured and tough competitions of India. The purpose was to make students give greater importance to their class XII syllabus vis-à-vis coaching classes, who had made a mockery of educational system of India by their crass commercialization and were preparing students in a mechanical manner to crack the IITJEE. However, to the dismay of students of the CBSE Board, Question Papers for Physics and Mathematics of this year class XII veered away from the traditional NCERT based questions and laid more stress on unconventional questions that are normally asked in IITJEE and for which coaching students are better prepared. The coaching mafia thus had the last laugh as now students will continue to give greater importance to coaching classes rather than traditional   class room teaching. The invisible but the omnipresent education mafia must have swayed the CBSE for such shift in setting of question papers or else their business would have doomed. To make matters worse, the Question papers of CBSE Physics leaked this year which may benefit large many students, (other than those belonging to Delhi zone for whom CBSE set separate set of question papers) who had access to the leaked question paper. Will anyone in the CBSE be held accountable for such lapse? What aapkaa Sibal has to say on both these fiasco still remains to be heard, since it was his brainchild and decision to control the increasing impact and mushrooming of coaching classes-an endeavour in which he has failed miserably.