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Tuitions often costlier than fees by Rema Nagarajan

Private coaching constitutes a significantly large portion of the expense students incur on education, sometimes even bigger than the expenditure on school fees, a study says.

In Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, school students who go for tuitions spend more on private coaching than the average school student does on all items including school fees, transport, books and stationary and uniforms.

These are the findings of a in 2007-08 National Sample Survey Organisation study on participation and expenditure on education by people aged between 5 and 29.

Among the larger states, West Bengal records the highest proportion of education expenditure on private coaching, about 40%. This is when the total amount spent on education is averaged across all students irrespective of whether they take private coaching or not.

No other component of school education in West Bengal constitutes as big a chunk of the total expenditure as private coaching. In urban West Bengal, the spending on private coaching is as high as 48% of the education expenses.

Other big states that spend a considerable share on private tutoring are Bihar (21%), Orissa (20%), Gujarat (20%), Maharashtra (16%) and Jharkhand (15%).

In most of these states, including West Bengal, school fees are quite low. The exception is Maharashtra, where it is rather high, about 38%, comprising the biggest chunk of average money spent on education in a state per student annually.

In Bihar and Orissa, rural students seem to be spending a much larger share on private tuitions than their urban counterparts — 24% in rural areas against 18% in urban

Bihar and 28% in rural Orissa vis-a-vis 16% in urban areas.

This could be because most rural students in these states attend government schools where fees are quite low. The states accounting for the smallest proportion on private coaching are Andhra Pradesh (3%), Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, 4% each. There is little difference in the pattern between rural and urban areas in these states.

If the average amount spent on private coaching per year is calculated taking into account only those students who take private tuitions, then, among the bigger states, Gujarat has the highest spending of Rs 3,318. Maharashtra follows with Rs 3,273. Karnataka comes next with Rs 2,604 and Delhi Rs 2,593.

It is least in Tamil Nadu (Rs 1,052) and in Andhra Pradesh where it works out to an average of just Rs 1,108 per student per year.

Across the country, about 27% of students in urban areas and 15% of those in the rural parts spent money on private coaching, which included school as well as technical and vocational education.

The average yearly spending by rural school students who took private coaching was less than half of what was spent by their urban counterparts.

In Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh even rural students spent well over 60% of what the urban students paid for private coaching.

The greatest difference between what rural students and their urban counterpart spent on private tuition was in West Bengal. The urban spending on private tuition averaged Rs

3,485 a year per student — among the highest in the country. In the rural areas, it was a meager Rs 377, the lowest average rural spending on private coaching in the entire country.

A look at the way the money spent on private coaching is divided between the various stages of education shows that expenses are highest in the secondary and higher secondary levels, or from classes IX to XII. At this level, the spending on private tutoring accounts for a fifth of the expense on education, after which it falls to just 10%.

This reflects the practice of stepping up private tutoring at the level of board exams and further for entrance into professional courses and college. While the spending by both rural and urban segments on private tutoring remains more or less the same till class VII, when it comes to the secondary and higher secondary level, the urban segments pulls ahead with tuitions accounting for about a quarter of education expenses, while it is just 16% in the rural segment.