Finer details of the School Education Ministry’s plan to impart NEET coaching to government school students through 450 centres across the State is yet to percolate to the district-level.
Teachers of government higher secondary schools say though their opinion was not taken by the School Education Minister K. A. Sengottaiyan before making the announcement that the coaching will be conducted by trained staff and retired teachers on Saturdays, the initiative is well-conceived.
According to official sources, there is no information about the centres. Teachers believe government schools will be identified as centres, but are not clear whether the coaching will be given to all the students or only for those with the capability to perform well.
Also, there is a confusion prevailing among teachers on the content for the proposed NEET coaching. The Government has said the syllabi will have to be changed and raised on par with that of CBSE.
The old syllabus is being followed now for the higher secondary classes. There is only one month to go for the quarterly exam, and the government has not spelt its stand clearly on the schedule for conduct of public examinations for eleventh standard, Antony Anbarasu, district unit president of Tamil Nadu Higher Secondary Post Graduate Teachers' Association, said.
Quoting teachers, the school heads say semester system will be more suitable to have a successful tryst with NEET coaching.
By convention, the syllabi has to be updated every five years. But, the contents were left untouched for about 10 years, and that was the reason for the rather poor performance of government school students, teachers say, acknowledging that there was a need for the teaching community also to shed their resistance to accepting tough contents in upgraded syllabi.
