A delivery boy of LPG refills has admitted his three children in a corporate IIT techno school in Tanuku last year by paying hefty amounts of fee ranging up to Rs. 60,000.
This indicates the fast-spreading trend of IIT craze among the students and parents across the length and breadth of West Godavari district.
The IIT fever, which was limited to intermediate education till recently, has now engulfed the school education as a whole.
The corporate giants running intermediate colleges with EAMCET as the main base are switching to school education with IIT concept as the war cry, thanks to the falling demand for Engineering education.
According to information, the techno schools or concept schools have already made forays into the small towns in the district such as Tadepalligudem, Palacole, Bhimavaram and Tanuku.
The techno schools admit children from LKG to class X offering IIT ‘foundation courses'.
The day for a budding student aspiring to become an IITian in residential schools begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m.
The managements of concept schools have reportedly pressed PROs into service to attract the prospective students with a target to catch at least two students a day each. They receive an attractive ‘incentive' from the respective managements for this job.
As the schools are to re-open in a couple of months, the techno schools are vying each other to hold lunch-on ‘awareness meets' in posh hotels, involving parents and teachers representing different government and private schools.
The management of a private school in Tanuku has released a CD, countering the campaign unleashed by the techno schools in favour of IIT with data on a wide-range of educational opportunities available for students other than IIT courses in a bid to insulate itself from the onslaught .
According to Chunduri Ravi Chowdary, a spokesman of the Andhra Pradesh Private Unaided School Managements Association, the hopes created by the so-called techno schools among students and parents about IIT do not match with the ground realities.
Only 130 students from the State are able to get into IIT courses out of the total 5,000 seats available in all the IITs together all over the country every year on an average.
If that was the reality, how could these concept schools, with large intakes accommodate their students in the most sought-after IITs, he asks.
