Student suicides shake up Kota, experts say counselling and mental grooming must before Kota coaching

Experts have advised parents to groom and counsel their children before sending them to the nation's coaching hub Kota, a strategy they have dubbed "preparing for the preparation," to help pupils cope with the strain of JEE and NEET preparations.

Children must be prepared through professional aptitude exams, mental grooming, and adaptability with daily activities before travelling to the coaching hub, according to educational professionals and psychologists who have been keeping an eye on the recent suicide events in Kota.

MAJORITY OF PARENTS BRING KIDS TO KOTA WITH NO PLANNING

The majority of parents bring their kids to Kota for instruction with essentially no planning and with little attention paid to anything else, they observed.

The recent suicide deaths of four coaching students have once again sparked a discussion about the mental health of the children who are frequently burdened by the demands of a rigorous curriculum and high family expectations.

Harish Sharma, the principal counsellor and student-behaviour specialist at Allen Career Institute, claims that most parents send their children to Kota with little to no planning and that the main priorities are simply setting up the logistics and the cash.

"When a child is in Class 5 or 6, parents decide that two years or four years later he or she will be sent to Kota. They start saving up accordingly or start making plans to move to the city well in advance. However, they never try to professionally analyse whether their child actually wants to do that or is even fit for doing that," Sharma told PTI.

EMPHASIS ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE RATHER THAN MENTAL CAPACITY

He asserted that parents frequently place a greater emphasis on their children's academic performance than on their mental capacity.

"Scoring above 90 percent in Class 10 or 12 cannot be a benchmark to decide whether a child is meant for engineering or medicine," he said.

"We often find students here who either come under parental pressure or did not have an idea early on about their choice of subjects. This is where professional aptitude tests can help," he added.

Sharma clarified that speaking to neighbours and family members whose children may have been to Kota is insufficient and that prompt professional assistance should be sought.

RAJASTHAN GOVERNMENT LIKELY TO BRING IN LAW TO REGULATE COACHING CENTRES

Meanwhile, 'The Rajasthan Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Bill - 2022' has been in the making since 2020 and is likely to be introduced in the next session of the state assembly.

The law establishes an education regulatory body which would keep a tab on coaching centres, ensure that they open counseling cells, end the glorification of toppers and deal with the kind of stress that may likely contribute to student suicides.

The law proposes aptitude tests for students before they join a coaching centre for competitive exam preparation, and a helpline number for students who feel they cannot face the stress.

DO INSTITUTES PLAY A ROLE IN STUDENT SUICIDES?

This year, 2 lakh students — a record — are enrolled in Kota's coaching facilities. This year, at least 14 kids who were enrolled in coaching centres here allegedly committed suicide as a result of academic pressure.

Instead of encouraging their kids to become physicians and engineers, parents should make their kids take an aptitude test, according to Dr. Chandra Shekhar Sushil, the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the New Medical College Hospital.

"I do not believe coaching institutes have much of a role in student suicides. We have to admit that JEE and NEET are very tough exams and hence the teaching and learning is also supposed to be of the same level," he said.

"However, taking an aptitude test before sending students to Kota is very important. It is equally important that some sort of counselling and grooming is done at least two years before the child comes to Kota as the majority of these kids have never stayed away from home before,” Sushil added.

RK Verma, the managing director and academic head of Resonance, a well-known coaching facility in Kota, agreed with him when he said that it is crucial for parents and children to establish effective communication channels early on.

"Parents cannot expect that their child will suddenly start communicating with them when he is here. This bond and comfort level has to be developed before. We have also noticed that the kids are completely dependent upon parents till the time they come here," he said.

He claimed that the academic pressure in Kota's coaching centres is significantly more than what pupils typically experience before attending the centre.

"The academic pressure which is far more than what they have been dealing with so far, the inability to manage the routine chores like arranging your wardrobe, sending clothes for laundry, reaching the mess on time to have meals, waking up themselves, all of these things the children have not done on their own before coming here," Verma said.

"So suddenly, the child finds himself lost. So we advise parents to stop keeping their children in their laps for at least two years before sending them here. So that the only difficulty they find is dealing with the academic part, which we can resolve here,” he added.

STUDENT SUICIDES IN KOTA

Three student suicides within a 12-hour period on December 11 shook the coaching city of Kota, causing the district and coaching officials to spring into action and take precautions against similar incidents.

Ankush Anand, 16, a NEET applicant from Supaul district in Bihar, and Ujjwal Kumar, 18, a JEE aspirant from Gaya district in Bihar, were two of the three students who died after hanging themselves in their individual rooms at the same PG in Talwandi under Jawahar Nagar police station.

The other, Pranav Verma, 17, a NEET candidate from the Madhya Pradesh region of Shivpuri, is said to have passed away on the same day in his hostel room in Landmark City, which is under the jurisdiction of Kunhari police station.

On December 23, another student named Aniket Kumar, who lives in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, was discovered hanging from a ceiling fan in his dorm room.

Suicide prevention helpline numbers:

• iCALL: +91 9152 987 821 (Mon to Sat, 10 am - 8 pm)
• Roshni: +9140 6620 2000, +9140 6620 2001 (All days, 11 am - 9 pm)
• SNEHA: 044-24640050, 044-24640060 (Mon to Sat, 10 am - 6 pm)
  

(With inputs from PTI)