The Ministry of Education has released guidelines to regulate coaching centers. As per the guidelines, coaching institutes will now have to be registered, cannot enrol students below the age of 16 years or charge exorbitant fees, and provide psychological and mental health support to students besides conforming with fire safety and building safety norms.
The guidelines for registration and regulation of Coaching Center 2024 were prepared on January 15 and were forwarded to chief secretaries of all states, and Union territories for taking appropriate action. While a handful of states already have laws regulating coaching institutes at the national level, a concern was raised about the growing number of unregulated private coaching centers charging excess fees which causes undue pressure on students that results in suicides.
Last year, In November, the issue went to the Supreme Court when a distressed parent Aniruddha Narayan Malpani approached the top court seeking guidelines or any kind of a regulation to prevent the loss of precious young lives at Kota, Rajasthan which recorded 26 suicide deaths in 2023, the highest since 2015.
The official notice reads, ''Due to high competition and academic pressure on students, coaching centres should take steps for students' mental well-being of the students and may conduct classes without putting undue pressure on them. Also, they should establish the mechanism for immediate intervention to provide targeted and sustained assistance to students in distress and stressful situations''.
What are the conditions for registration of coaching centers?
- A person shall impart coaching or establish, run, manage or maintain a coaching center, only with prior registration of such coaching centre as per the provisions of this Guidelines.
- The coaching center existing on the date of implementation of the guidelines shall apply for registration within three months from the date of implementation of the guidelines
- Application for the registration of coaching center shall be made to the competent authority within whose local jurisdiction such coaching center is situated, in such form, with such fees and documents as may be specified by the appropriate government.
- In the case of a coaching center having multiple branches, each such branch shall be treated as a separate coaching center and it shall be necessary to submit a separate application for registration of each branch.
- The competent authority shall, within three months from the date of receipt of the application for registration of the coaching center, either grant the registration certificate in the prescribed form, or shall communicate to the applicant his order of refusal to grant such registration after recording reasons in writing, for such refusal.
- The period of validity of the registration certificate shall be decided by the appropriate government unless cancelled earlier for any reason.
- Every registered coaching center shall apply for renewal of registration certificate to the competent authority two months before the date of expiry of such registration.
Fees
The tuition fees for different courses/curriculum being charged shall be fair and reasonable and receipts for the fee charged must be made available. The coaching centre will have to issue a prospectus mentioning the fee structure of different programs, number of classes, and all other details . If the student has paid for the course in full and is leaving the course in the middle of the prescribed period, a student will be refunded from out of the fees deposited earlier for the remaining period, on a pro-rata basis within 10 days. If the student is staying in the hostel of the coaching center, then the hostel fees and mess fee, etc. will also be refunded.
