The State Government and the spirted teaching community should focus on rural students to replicate the success rate in NEET as in UPSC say Educationalists and Experts.
Even as Tamilnadu is grappling with the question of National Entrance Cum Eligibility Test (NEET) and it efficacy after the death of an Ariyalur Anitha, a Dalit girl, who ended her life after her efforts to get a medical seat had not fructified, the Tamilnadu Government responded with the plan to establish 412 NEET coaching centers across the state, to coach and train up medical aspirants.
The Government's effort would help the medical aspirants to crack NEET for medical admissions at the national level say experts.
But the common man’s stand against NEET is based on rural students not having been equipped with the necessary skill sets to crack the national level test, which is conducted only in English and Hindi. And the anti- NEET sentiment is based on the premise that rural students hailing from impoverished backgrounds lack the means and the wherewithal to spend money on coaching classes and train them up in English as most of them might have studied in Tamil medium.
The moot question now is will the proposed NEET coaching centres help rural students?
K.Sengottaiyan, TN School Education Minister who spelt out the Government’s plan yesterday at Krishnagiri said “The teaching quality of schools will be improved and students would be coached to the extent that there would be no more deaths owing to NEET”.
Would there be any takers for the Government proposal among the Tamilnadu student community who have been vociferously demanding to do away with NEET forever and on a permanent basis?.
SimpliCity spoke to Dr. Kanagaraj, a leading Educationist in the city, who conducts free coaching classes for IAS aspirants and has produced good results and hundreds of career civil servants.
Working as Head of the Department of Political Science in Government Arts College, Kanagaraj has found the time and inspiration to train up rural youth for national level UPSC and the state level TNPSC. To his credit over 168 of his students have passed the civil services among them 21 have cleared IAS over the years.
Dr.Kanagaraj analyzed the problem threadbare and came up with sound arguments. The educationist started with the argument “It is not true that Tamilnadu students are lagging behind when it comes to cracking national level exams or eligible tests. Tamilnadu is a high performance state in UPSC in the past 20 years and it can be replicated in NEET too, if only proper training and infrastructure facilities are extended to rural students hailing from rural pockets spread all over the state”.
While welcoming the Government measure to open coaching institutes for NEET Kanagaraj said training up students would be highly effective one, and with the increased infrastructure and revision of curriculum, TN students might stand a good chance of even walking away with a good chunk of the total 50,000 medical seats available all over India.
"Let us look at the positive side. Tamilnadu has only 25,000 medical seats in all the government- run and private medical college, where as when the students are equipped to crack NEET, our students could even walk away with 10,000 seats”, said the teacher who has hands on experience in coaching up students for IAS and other civil services and runs Kanagaraj free IAS coaching academy at Nanjundapuram.
Insisting on focusing hard on the bulk of rural and impoverished students like Anitha, he said that they should be trained and made to crack NEET, where in lies the whole challenge.
Kanagaraj opined that the private sector with its huge resources could also contribute its mite by starting free coaching centers in their respective cities and town. Students hailing from Below Poverty Line families should get the benefit of these coaching centers.
He also exhorted the spirted teaching community to contribute their mite to realize the dream of medical education by thousands of Tamilnadu students by opening and training medical aspirants for NEET with a charitable mind set. If all this should happen, the days are not far off, when the Tamilnadu’s flag flies high in NEET too at the national level.
“After all our civil servants have been working in over 160 districts out of total 650 districts in the country as IAS and IPS officers, the same can be replicated in NEET too. The students and teaching community should face the challenge with grit and determination to bring about the desired change”, Kanagaraj said with lot of hope and promise in his voice.