With the Class XII exams ending in the last week of March, the Tamil Nadu School Education Department has begun expanding the facility of residential coaching for government school students preparing to take competitive entrance exams for higher education courses in premier institutions.
According to sources, more students are applying for the coaching as they now have the option to attend residential coaching at the regional or state level instead of non-residential coaching at the district level. "The government will take care of the expenses, and the headmasters have been asked to get consent from the parents of students who are interested in residential coaching," said officials, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
Coaching for more than 1,500 students preparing for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) has been underway since March 27. State-level residential coaching for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced will begin on April 10 in Erode. More than 750 students who have already appeared for JEE Mains Session I and who will appear for JEE Mains sessions II shortly will participate in the programme, said sources.
With this expansion, the department hopes that the residential coaching will help in more than doubling this number in the coming years. In fact in the recent budget, the government announced that the Kalloori Kanavu initiative would be expanded to enhance awareness on scholarships available for undergraduate courses in over 350 premiere institutions in India and abroad in 20 different fields of study.
A total of 780 government school students have already secured seats in Indian institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Law Universities (NLUs), in the last two years.
Government schools provide coaching to students preparing to write NEET and JEE examinations during the course of the academic year itself. In fact, the district-level centres were created last year to provide summer coaching to students.
Likewise, as part of the model schools initiative, the department has already been providing coaching to students for more than 23 national-level entrance examinations besides NEET and JEE, such as the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), the Indian Maritime University Common Entrance Test (IMU CET), and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research Aptitude Test (IISER IAT) and so on, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
The department also facilitates the application process, coaching and travel arrangements for students appearing for these exams.
