Today, whenever a student gets selected in NEET, JEE, UPSC or any other competitive exam, the media presents his success as the success of the coaching institute. Congratulations, hoardings, advertisements, and social media posts – one name shines on all of them: coaching centre. But in all this noise, the teacher gets lost, who once taught that student to hold a pencil for the first time, who introduced him to letters, who laid the foundation of his calculations and reasoning. These are the same teachers who struggle for years in schools and colleges to instill thinking ability and confidence in children without any special resources.

Education was never a market. It was a relationship – of a Guru and a disciple. But since the dominance of coaching institutes in the field of education, this relationship has taken the form of a service and a customer. The student has become a consumer and the teacher – a product seller. The coaching institute is now a brand, which sells success, and the school teacher is just a government employee, who gets neither praise nor a platform.
Why this imbalance in education? Is it fair to give the entire credit of a student's success to only the coaching institute he went to in the last one or two years? And does the role of the school or college where the student spent 10-12 years of his life become null and void?
We have to remember that no student clears UPSC overnight. The process starts somewhere from memorizing a class-3 Hindi poem, when the teacher corrects his pronunciation mistakes. It starts with the first multiplication and division of mathematics, when the teacher converts his finger counting into calculations. These teachers do not teach under any branded board, their classrooms are without air-conditioners, and sometimes even without fans. But it is their sweat that lays the foundation of the future.
When a student says in an interview that "My success is the result of my coaching institute," then on hearing this sentence, a teacher teaching in a government school in some village smiles silently. He knows that he must have done something right, only then this student could reach that place. But pain is hidden in that smile, in that silence are those questions which no one asks - "Did I not have any role?"
Coaching institutes can provide a shortcut to success, but the habit of thinking, command over language, social consciousness – all these are developed in schools only. Schools do not just prepare for exams, they build individuals.
In the language of the market, today education has become a 'branded service'. Coaching centres sell themselves with success graphs, and use successful students as advertisements. This is a new form of exploitation, in which someone else does the hard work and someone else gets the benefit.
Look at the language of the advertisements – “72 selected from our institute!”, “AIR-1 our students!”, “Impossible without coaching!” – these claims do not have the name of any school. There is no picture of any Hindi, Maths or Science teacher who prepared the students amidst their limited salary, dilapidated school and administrative pressures.
Here is another irony – the student who became successful by going to a coaching centre, himself came from a school. He had once learned while being bored or even having fun in the class. His personality includes school prayers, teacher's scolding, silence of the library and the smell of practical classes. But after success, he branded coaching instead of school.
This trend not only reflects the forgetfulness of society, it also shows the decline of our priorities.
The original teachers are confined to the classroom only. There is no scholarship in their name, no credit system. They spend the entire day checking board exam answer sheets, performing election duty, counting eggs for mid-day meals and still take out time to explain to students – “Please add IAS before your name and come to school once!”
Some teachers are so simple and dedicated that they feel proud of their students' success but remain silent even if they do not see their name in their social media posts. They consider their role as God's work - without any expectation of credit, only with the spirit of building society.
We need to start a new social campaign where every selected student names his/her school and teachers on an open platform. The administration should make such rules where the name of the school and college is also recorded along with the success of the students. The media should also give information about the coaching institutes as well as the original educational institute of that student in their reporting.
Coaching institutes must also take the moral responsibility to include the entire educational journey of the student in their promotions – not just the last two years.
If we do not do this, a day will come when our schools will become just a name, and education will become just an expensive service.
A true teacher is one who burns like a lamp so that the student sitting in front can see the light. But if the lamp is constantly ignored, then darkness can become permanent.

Email:-----------------------------priyankasaurabh9416@gmail.com