Seat selling gets hotter this year

Chennai: Sale of higher secondary school seats has begun in Tamil Nadu. With  class 10 results scheduled to be announced on Friday morning, scores of parents would be rushing to Namakkal and Rasipuram to ‘buy’ seats for their children in the rote learning schools ‘famous’ for producing state ranks. Rather than investing over Rs 50 lakh for medical seats, middle class parents and even VIP families choose to spend up to Rs10 lakh in Namakkal schools. A few Namakkal schools have even announced free education and even boarding for students with scores above 490 (out of 500) marks so as to ensure they get ranks in the final exams.

Sources say there are schools which have their agents in various districts who  bring school toppers and high-scoring students in government schools. It’s a known fact that most rote-learning schools skip the plus-1 syllabus and ‘force-feed’ plus-2 portions for two years to enable the students to get high marks.  

Explaining the business strategy of Namakkal schools, educationist S.S. Rajagopalan said, “Namakkal schools are ‘kidnapping’ bright students from various schools across Tamil Nadu and hard-pushing them to get state ranks in plus-2 exams so as to enrich their businesses. It’s well known that these schools enroll students who score above 400 marks in class 10 exams and train them to be toppers. The government should look into this.”

He added that these schools should be asked to publish details of each student’s participation in extra-curricular activities and sports. Rote learning will affect the personality of the child, says former child welfare committee chairperson Dr P. Manorama, who is a pediatrician by profession. She recalled that one her patients had dropped out from a Namakkal school because of the stressful environment there.

“Students are asked to study from 6 am to 10 pm on normal days. It’s worse at exam time. Kids experience severe mental stress as they are forced to be with their books throughout the day. The two-year exercise will definitely affect the child’s mental health”, said Dr Manorama.

She argued that the parents did wrong admitting their children in such rote-schools at the risk of their losing mental balance. “Interaction among children is very less in these schools. The kids are treated as machines to score marks by all means,” she added.