COACHING – a CLASS apart!

HE wakes up at 5.00 am (for a 7.00 am lecture) every single day, without any exceptions, round the year, year after year, including Public Holidays, Festivals and Weekends! SHE burns the midnight oil, manages all her household chores and ensures that each and every student of hers is academically taken care of thoroughly and equally – without any bias. S/HE is your modern-day TEACHER – a coaching class teacher. Be it ”personal commitments” or be it ”pandemic times” – one theme that binds all is – “the show must go on!” The performance of all students matters every single year – June to June! The evolution and journey of COACHING as an industry is a CLASS apart! This article is dedicated to these unsung heroes who shape the lives of millions of students – from Kohima to Kutch and Kanyakumari to Kashmir.

According to estimates available in the public domain, half of the 1500mn population of India shall be under the age of 25 years by 2030, with 60% of them being school-going students (3 years to 18 years) and another 40% shall be students in higher education (19 years to 24 years). To teach these 600mn to 650mn youth, India will need at least 15mn to 20mn school teachers and another 10mn to 11mn teachers in higher education. Even if some opportunities may be replaced by technological intervention, another 25mn to 30mn people shall still be needed for administration and management within the overall ”Education Sector”. And most importantly, 18mn to 20mn opportunities are expected to be created in additional education/coaching and allied services.

The Education Sector (being human-centric) shall be a significant contributor to employment in our country by 2030. It is expected to employ almost 75mn to 80mn youth, nearly 7% – 8% of the Indian workforce, by the end of this decade (with a significant one-fourth share being contributed by supplementary educational services). Just imagine the immense impact that the ”Education Sector” as a whole can create on improving employment across India if the spending by the Government (currently at 4% of GDP) is enhanced above 10% of GDP (at par with developed countries). As we usher in the ”Amrit Kaal of India @100” with an intent of being a developed nation by 2047, the Education Sector shall remain a Blue Ocean of infinite opportunities in forthcoming times. Recent layoffs in some EdTech companies in India are just an after-effect of the post-pandemic structural shift in educational pedagogy from offline to online to hybrid.

Class IX to Class XII (with an 8-semester pattern) shall soon be a seamless sub-segment under the revamped 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 structure of the National Education Policy (NEP). As the (current) demarcation between Science, Commerce and Arts streams post-Class X diminishes, it is just a matter of time before subject choices shall be spread across IX to XII. With the advent of CUET (in addition to JEE, NEET, CAFC, CLAT, etc.) as a common gateway post Class XII, the entire national test-prep segment is heading towards complete transformation. Board exams being conducted twice a year (from 2024) will be immensely helpful in reducing the academic stress of students, thereby removing their age-old do-or-die predicament. Change brings opportunity; let’s embrace these tides of change for infinite forthcoming possibilities.

A report published by Dell Technologies and authored by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) states that most of the job opportunities that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented. The pace of change will be very rapid. The ability to gain new knowledge will be more valuable than the knowledge itself. I firmly believe that amidst the upcoming new-age tech-based pedagogy, the only constant that shall prevail is our country’s unwavering faith and trust in age-old ”Guru-Shishya Parampara”. As modern-day Guru(s), we shall have to keep evolving from dawn to dusk and beyond, be it the 7.00 am lecture or burning the midnight oil – the grind shall continue.

One can’t share about things that (formally) don’t exist yet. Still, one can surely ignite to learn how to learn – and that’s precisely what a coaching-class teacher has been doing relentlessly for so many decades. The role of a Guru is to bring academic ease to millions of Shishya(s), which does require a niche academic skill set. Knowing the pulse of students has been our hallmark, and it shall always remain in all ways, be it offline/online/hybrid. COACHING is (thus) a CLASS apart, and so are we!

One amongst You,
Dr Shrenik BK
Co-founder, Education Ssabhi Ko

—————————————————————————————————————————————-As a part of forthcoming monthly series of articles on the ”Indian Education ecosystem,”
I hereby dedicate this first article to the clan that I (proudly) belong to, being an erstwhile Economics teacher (myself).
Do share your views and opinion about this article at educationssabhiko@gmail.com