Alongwith several significant suggestions to reduce stress levels amongst students at coaching institutes, the Kota District administration have instructed the institutes to focus on increasing recreational activities, counselors and ensuring weekly offs for their students.

Kota District Collector Dr. Ravi Kumar Surpur had issued guidelines to the coaching institutes in November 2015 to check stress among the coaching students and sought a compliance report within 4 weeks. Four institutes: Allen Career Institute, Career Point Institute, Vibrant Institute and Aakash Institute had submitted their compliance reports earlier this month. While reviewing the compliance reports, Dr. Surpur sought progress reports on the administration’s guidelines from the coaching institutes about issues like academic and clinical counselors, starting student helplines, existing recreational activities, conducting screening tests, student batch segregation, weekly offs, food, fee refunds etc. He asked the institutes to augment the number of counselors at their campuses. He also emphasized on ensuring weekly offs at the institutes since it would relieve student stress. The Kota Administration has also instructed coaching institutes to motivate students for physical activities like sports for recreation and stress reduction.

Dr. Surpur also asked the coaching institutes to make student screening and joint counseling of parents & students mandatory at the time of admission, to judge their aptitude and realistic potential for competitive examinations. He also asked the institutes to inform students about other career options apart from IIT-JEE, AIPMT and other engineering and medical exams.

With a view to reduce stress among students due to financial burdens, the administration has also stressed coaching institutes and hostels to adopt ‘Easy Exit Option’ for fee refunds. If any student wants to leave the institute or hostel after some time, they may do so by paying for the period for which they stayed in the institute.

Dr. Surpur also asked the institutes to not inform parents frequently about the students’ scores in periodic tests, as such information increases pressure on students. He has also asked the institutes to not glorify toppers, rather they should commit to improving student skills.

Naveen Maheshwari, Director, Allen Career Institute, informed PagaLGuY that their institute has already appointed academic and clinical counselors, who are carrying out counseling sessions for students. Ashish Sharma, CEO, Resonance Coaching Institute, mentioned that they were already following most of the guidelines, including weekly offs and counseling programs. The representatives of Vibrant Institute and Aakash Institute also attended the meeting.