By Vickram Kilpady
Google boss Sundar Pichai’s Wikipedia profile tells us about his stellar journey from IIT Kharagpur to Stanford and Wharton. But it remains silent on whether he joined the ubiquitous coaching classes that now define urban schooling. For most Indian students today, private tuitions are not a luxury, but a necessity—an uncomfortable truth confirmed by the latest National Sample Survey (NSS).
Conducted across 52,085 households and over 2,20,000 individuals, the Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education (80th NSS round, April-June 2025) reveals that nearly every second urban student seeks private tuition after enduring seven-hour school days. In Classes 11 and 12 alone, 44.6 percent of urban students turn to tuitions, compared to 33.1 percent in rural India. Overall, one in three senior secondary students nationwide attends private coaching.
The numbers expose India’s education paradox. In rural areas, 66 percent of students still attend government schools, while in cities, 70 percent are in private institutions. Yet, urban parents spend Rs 15,143 annually on course fees alone—almost four times the rural average of Rs 3,979. Coaching expenses mirror the divide: Rs 10,000 per urban student annually versus Rs 4,500 for rural students.
The Survey’s data underline a grim reality—classroom teaching is failing. Once a neighbourhood teacher’s side-income activity, tuition has ballooned into a $29-billion edtech juggernaut. With GST collections from coaching institutes more than doubling in four years (Rs 2,240 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 5,600 crore in 2023–24), the industry thrives on student anxiety, parental insecurity, and systemic neglect.
Policy implications are stark. The New Education Policy 2020, which promised mother-tongue teaching and holistic learning, seems far removed from this lived reality. As NSS Director General Geeta Singh Rathore put it, the data is meant to support evidence-based policymaking. But statistics, like bikinis, reveal only part of the truth.
For now, India’s students trudge through long school hours, pile onto coaching centres, and fuel a booming edtech economy. Policymakers must decide whether to continue outsourcing learning to tuition mills—or to make classrooms places where Saraswati once again chooses to dwell.