Effect of COVID on Students preparing for Entrance Tests like JEE and NEET

COVID has affected almost every aspect of our day to day life, and the education sector is no exception, probably one of the most affected ones. Almost in all the countries, the educational institutes are closed in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID. As of 7 June 2020, about 1.7 billion learners are currently affected due to school closures in response to the pandemic. As per UNICEF, 134 nations are presently implementing nationwide closures, and 38 are implementing local closures, impacting about 98.5% of the world’s student population.

Now coming to what’s happening in our nation and especially for the students aiming for entrance tests like JEE and NEET, I will start with what the students who were ready to face these exams in April and May this year. Typically in India, due to the stiff competition for prestigious IIT or MBBS seats, a student prepares roughly for two to four years to achieve this dream. Now when they were gearing up for these exams and almost completed the board examinations, COVID came as unlikely destruction, and they got informed on the night of 19 March that exams will be postponed.

Students getting anxious due to new postponements

Few days after they were told that the exam will now be taken in July-August. It was a setback to them, but still, they digested the news with the hope that this extra time will help them prepare well and improve their weaker links. One good thing announced by National Testing Agency, NTA, is that they released an app called NTA Abhyas, which will provide one mock test daily for JEE Main and NEET, and it’s a very well made app. Till date, it’s doing that for 54 days now, giving the student an excellent testing platform without any cost.

But as time progressed, the situation started getting worse with each day, and almost 15 days before the scheduled JEE Main HRD minister announced that the exams are further postponed to September. Now, this tareekh pe tarrekh style of HRD minister is making them nervous and increasing their stress as it is still looking unlikely that exams will be conducted in September or not. Notably, the students who have prepared hard are now finding it tough to focus now. They are wondering that IITs and others have announced a complete semester to be conducted virtually and if they are not in a position to call students on the campus why there’s a rush to conduct these exams. For mentors like us also it’s tough to help them plan strategies because things are getting far worse each day with India now recording 25K+ patients every day. Plus, these students are not the priority for coaching institutions as they have already paid what they were supposed to, and they have become a sort of a liability to them. For coaching, newer students are always the priority because they have to milk more money out of them.

Adaptations by coaching classes

For students who have entered class XI and XII this session, they are exposed to online mode of teaching, which is new to most of them plus new for the coaching institutes as well. In India still, the majority share of test preparation market is with brick and mortar model of coaching. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, almost all coaching institutes have tried to adapt to this unexpected change, but here instead of invention, they are mostly in a jugaad mode, you can say. They all are reluctant to invest in the technologies mostly because they still believe it’s a temporary phenomenon. When it started in March, no one expected it would last till July. Now it seems it might go on even in the next session. Also, because most of the teachers also were not accustomed to this mode of teaching, what we are seeing is that the learning experience, which wasn’t the best even before, has deteriorated even further. There have been too many instants of network disruptions as you see jokes on social media that student reciting counting says 55 after 44 as the network was lost when the numbers in between were taught. Even the experiences from those million dollar startup’s who are feel this as their Paytm moment after demonetization are also far from satisfactory.

Many institutes are trying to find out the best alternatives even by adapting their strategies frequently. However, still, no one seems to have come up with the magical formula partly because I feel peer to peer discussions and doubt solving sessions are very important in this learning process. But I am hopeful this experience will help to develop some hybrid model down the line which I feel is the best way to deal and even scale-up,

The problems are more for students who have taken admission to an institute for the first time and don’t know any teacher, and the teacher also doesn’t know anything about him. Plus, most institutes are in a rush to cover the syllabus and demand the next installment of fees without actually caring about what is learned by students.

This pandemic has hit the cash flows of schools and coaching institutes poorly. Hardly any school or institute is paying their employees their full salary even many haven’t paid anything since March. Many employees have been asked to leave. Almost all coaching institutes has seen a drop up to 50-70% in admissions, plus those taking admissions are also not depositing the requested fee. I fear many small schools and coaching institutes won’t survive this pandemic. The situation looks very bad for them.

Plus, one thing that I will like to point out is that hardly any school or coaching is concerned about counselling the students about the judicious use of Gadgets, and some are even having 5-6 hrs, daily classes. So students screen times have crossed more than 8 hrs as he has to read and practice questions also from Pdf files, and it'll effect their eyes and mental health. I fear we are pushing them to become digital zombies. However, some have sent hard copies via courier to students to take care of this aspect.

Possible long term future for coaching classes

From this experience of more than 120 days of this teaching in pandemic times, I feel that 100% online mode of learning won’t work for 15-year-old kids. The personal connection with the teacher , the bond we talk of is missing plus peer to peer discussion is also absent in this. Plus, you don’t have that motivated students who will attend these lectures daily and complete their assignments. Even the innovation in imparting concepts using digital tools is missing badly. No course provider matches 10% of the quality you see on Coursera. But still, I believe online learning is there to stay but as a supplementary and complementary to our traditional teaching modes. Also, I am hopeful there will be some who are keeping student and learning in focus and will come out with some outstanding solutions, and as I said, hybrid learning models should evolve in the meantime. Also, it would be better if agencies declare that the exams will be conducted only after the pandemic situation is improved. They would be intimated 45 or 60 days before the examination dates.

(This was written by me for chalknews.in -https://chalknews.in/editorials/effect-of-covid-on-students-preparing-for-entrance-tests-like-jee-and-neet/)