Hyderabad: Online education portals lack minimum regulatory compliance

Hyderabad: Do the problems cropping up in the school education system turn into a goldmine for the online coaching entities taking parents for a ride? Who does monitoring of these entities for minimum standards compliance vis-a-vis their counterparts providing offline education in face-to-face classroom system of teaching?

N Renuka, a post-graduate (PGT) teaching mathematics for Class VIII to X at a prominent minority-run high school in Secundrabad says, "I used to take tuition to few students, besides teaching at the school. It fetched an additional Rs 25,000 a month over and above my salary. However, the school management had come to know about it; It warned against teachers taking tuitions."

However, the same school had made us adapt online teaching in the first wave of Covid. Now, it is helping to take online tuitions. One can take group classes or on a one-on-one basis. Students bid with what they can pay per specific paper for the entire syllabus of each subject. The payment was made hourly. Apart from the school, "I take classes on second Saturdays and two Sundays to generate Rs 25,000." However, the online tuition portal did not ever ask me to present any credentials like degree certificates or training competition, as it is asked in the case of our school.

Further, there are coaching applications and online portals where parents are enrolling children paying anywhere around Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh for a series of offers covering coaching in science, mathematics, critical thinking, logical reasoning, speed maths, spell-bee preparation, maths olympiad, for primary to high school students. The teachers are paid per assignment or per class. "The online teaching portals run a campaign to entice and lure parents to make them feel that the online learning portal is better than the school attended by their wards," adds S Mehar, who runs a coaching institute in Kothapet. "Of late parents are brainwashed to think that it is important for their wards to learn coding, designing thinking and a host of other things to empower them to be ahead in the race.

Claims CVN Reddy (name changed), working in a government college in the city, who teaches maths and computers," the situation is not different for students pursuing 10+2 and under-graduate courses. "Students are signing up at the online portals. They bid for teachers quoting their price per class or per subject. Some prefer completion of their syllabus in a fixed period." "I was never asked to submit my credentials to verify whether I am qualified to teach a specific subject or not. To continue teaching online depends on the feed back by the students," he said.

Online teaching companies allow those who have not got opportunities to get a job and those underpaid. The physical schools and colleges and the faculty are subjected to a number of regulations and rules. Lack of even a minimum regulatory mechanism for online education companies is not a welcome sign, says Reddy.