Over the last decade or so, four districts emerged as the top educational districts of the State, if the measure of success was entry of students into professional courses. The four districts in the western region — Namakkal, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, and Erode — renowned for their extra-rigorous coaching techniques have been attracting students in large numbers.
Also, over the years, these districts seem to have accounted for most number of students who secured MBBS and BDS seats in various government colleges across the State. This year, however, when the criteria for admission was NEET, the number of students who secured MBBS/BDS seats in these districts fell rather dramatically — to 373 from 1,750 in 2016.
“Though these districts are sometimes called backward, it certainly is not the case when it comes to education. These schools work on a blueprint geared towards propelling a student towards a seat in an engineering or medical college, and have even found great success with this technique,” says a Health Department official.
The blueprint includes ignoring the Class XI syllabus and vaulting straight into Class XII, with a particular approach to cracking the board exam. With Tamil Nadu admitting students to professional engineering and medical colleges based on these marks, the entire system was geared towards producing successful candidates in this very task.
Namakkal, for instance, in 2016, had the highest number of students who had got admission into MBBS/BDS at 957. It also has 13 schools that send more than 20 students to do medicine every year. This year, that number has dropped to 109, and the number of schools that have sent over 20 students is at three. The other three districts send only a fraction of Namakkal's 957 students, but their numbers are in several 100s too.
An education department official in Krishnagiri makes no bones about it: “NEET is the reason.” Students were either unprepared or, under prepared to ace the entrance exam this year, he added.
K. Murugan, who runs a coaching centre for Plus Two students at Mohanur, zeroed in on the nub of the issue: a majority of private schools skipped Class IX and Class XI syllabi regularly. With the NEET question paper containing questions from Class IX to XII, the students were naturally caught unawares, leading to their poor performance, he rationalised.
He reckoned it would take another couple of years to enable the students of Namakkal schools to gain their supremacy by performing well in the NEET.
Education Department officials in Erode agreed that there had been a decline in the number of students from the district being admitted to the MBBS course this year. They agreed that the root cause was the fact that class XI portions were ignored in these schools. Adding to this was the confusion over whether NEET would indeed be implemented in Tamil Nadu, one official said.
Even in instances where students from these districts did take up coaching for NEET, leaving out the class XI portions completely made the gulf too wide to bridge, educationists pointed out. Besides, as the issue continues to gain political and community level traction in Tamil Nadu, they urged that no confusion should prevail about the manner of admission into MBBS courses.
S. Palaniandi, chairman of the Subramanian Arts and Science College, Mohanur, Salem, also a retired teacher, called for employing teaching methods that would help students understand the subject, rather than promote rote learning, which cannot help a student tackle a competitive exam such as NEET. But he added, the government would do well to start NEET coaching centres across the State, so that the next batch of students is well equipped.
(With inputs from Syed Muthahar in Salem, P.V. Srividya in Dharmapuri and S.P. Saravanan in Erode)
