"Regulating coaching centres treats the symptom, not the disease." Discuss with reference to the Centre's 2024 guidelines and recent State laws.

Around 75% of secondary and higher-secondary students in India have enrolled for private coaching (CMS-Education, 2025) [2]. The Centre's 2024 guidelines and new State laws now regulate this industry. They make coaching safer, but they leave untouched the reasons students need coaching in the first place.

Regulation: treating the symptom

• Centre's guidelines (16 January 2024): registration, fair fees, mental well-being, no batch segregation and grievance redressal. They are advisory, so each State must adopt them through its own law [1].
• Rajasthan Bill, 2025: mandatory registration, a compulsory counselling system, fees payable in instalments, at most five hours of classes a day, and penalties of ₹50,000 and then ₹2 lakh [2].
• Jharkhand Act, 2025: requires certified counsellors with Rehabilitation Council of India or equivalent credentials [3].
• Merit: these rules protect consumers, improve safety and curb misleading claims.

Why the disease persists

• Exam design drives demand: the Ministry of Education (2024) itself observed that board and competitive exams have created the coaching culture. Competition happens twice, first at board exams and then at entrance tests [2].
• Weak schooling: the Economic Survey 2016-17 linked poor learning outcomes to teacher absenteeism and a shortage of qualified teachers. Coaching fills this gap [2].
• Scarce seats and jobs: about 22 crore applications were made for 7.2 lakh central government posts between 2014-15 and 2021-22 [2].
• Laws alone have not worked: Bihar has regulated coaching since 2010 [4]. Yet the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education (2025) still found fraud, suicides, drug abuse and mental-health struggles in coaching centres [2].
• Gaps in the laws: the Rajasthan Bill leaves out online coaching, compliance costs are passed on to students, and protection differs from one State to another [2].

Treating the disease

• Give fixed weight to sustained board and degree performance so that fewer tests are stacked on top of each other.
• Improve school teaching so that coaching is no longer a substitute for it.
• Expand affordable, quality higher-education seats and raise the Gross Enrolment Ratio.
• Frame a model State law that also covers online coaching. Education is on the Concurrent List, so the Centre and States share this task [2].

Coaching regulation is necessary, but it only manages what high-stakes, low-capacity education produces. Rules on coaching should go together with exam reform, better schools and more seats. That would move India towards SDG 4's goal of equitable quality education, so that coaching becomes optional rather than unavoidable.