In the last one decade or so, tuition classes and coaching centres have slowly mushroomed everywhere in the city. They start as home tuitions or small coaching classes which then slowly graduate to training academies. From Kindergarten to class 10, these classes have almost created a parallel institutional framework in the city’s education scenario.

According to a recent survey conducted by The Straits Times, 7 in 10 parents send their children for tuition classes with every child spending at least three hours of his day in addition to the 5–6 hours of school in the tuition classes. Another study conducted by researcher K. Sujata revealed that around 42.5% students from the state of Maharashtra go to tuition classes upto class X.

Six year old Shravan Mate studies in a municipal school in Borivali. Shravan’s mother Vanita is a housewife and his grandmother Radhika works as a caretaker. Shravan’s father is an alcoholic and often passes days and nights abusing his wife and loitering in the locality with no work in hand. For Vanita, three hours of Shravan’s classes for which she has to pay around 300 rupees a month is the most productive time of the day.

Unlike Vanita, Rochelle D’souza and her husband Michael are well educated and hold postgraduate degrees. Michael works in a big consultancy firm at Parel and Rochelle is a freelance writer. Their only daughter Aviva studies in a top CBSE school in Bandra where learning outcomes are given more importance than rote learning and exams. Despite that, Rochelle and Michael chose to send her for an Abacus class and a Phonetics class.

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