As soon as the HSC exam ends students rush to get admitted to the coaching centres. Often most students get admitted even before the exam is over. But these coaching centres are not operating under any uniform rule.

According to the directors and owners of coaching centres there is no proper rule and regulation for the coaching centres.

Syed Mahbubul Haque, director, Omeca, said that they are paying income tax since 2001 but there is no definite rule under which the coaching centres could operate.

“Even if we have the desire to do business with legal trade licence we are not able to do that because on the government's part there is no definition for a coaching centre,” said Haque.

“There is no proper rule and regulations for coaching centres and on paper we are operating as a training centre,” he said.

Generally 40 to 50 students get admitted to a batch. Most students get admitted to the coaching centres with an amount of Tk 7,000 to 8,000 before the HSC result is published. After the result is published a good portion of the students do not have the required points to get admitted to Dhaka University (DU), Dhaka Medical College (DMC), Buet and other public universities.

So they at last do not get admitted to the respective coaching centres but do not get their money back. Absence of a uniform rule is giving rise to this kind of incidents.

“Coaching centres do not have any organisation of their own. We had one in past but now it is nonexistent. It happens because many people come to this business from different backgrounds so they cannot become unanimous on different issues and nothing fruitful comes out of the meetings. Right now there is no communication among different coaching centres,” said Haque.

Selim Raihan, assistant professor, Department of Economics, DU, said that the coaching centres should come under a uniform rule.

“Coaching centres are in fact a by product of our education system. In our system teachers

and students both think that students should be put into some bindings to learn something and from this view students get admitted to a coaching centre. Tough competition to get admitted to the best institutes is another reason of the rise of the coaching centres,” he said.

Scarcely students have the desire to study on their own and the coaching centres take this advantage, he said.

“If the colleges can give proper coaching to their students after the HSC exams and organise weekly workshops with teachers of DU, DMC and Buet that can be an alternative to the present system of coaching centres,” said Raihan.

According to most students getting admitted to a coaching centre is a trend rather than a necessity. With so many advertisements they sometimes confuse the students about

which would be the perfect for them. Many students end up getting admitted to more than one coaching centres.

Sadat (not real name), an HSC examinee thinking of getting admitted to a coaching centre, said, “There are so many coaching centres offering so many concessions that sometimes I become confused about in which to get admitted.”

“But in most cases our parents are more impatient to get us admitted to a coaching centre. Getting admitted to the coaching centres before the exam is over is more like a trend than a necessity. We want some respite after the exam ends,” he said.

Recently the coaching centres has come up with an innovative way to inform the students about their courses. They distribute forms at private coaching homes of reputed teachers where students are requested to fill up the form with their mobile phone numbers. Later the centres send sms [short message service] to the students about the concessions

they are offering.

“Besides prospectus and newspaper advertisements it is a very useful medium to contact with the students especially

those coming from outside the city. We can contact with them with the quickest possible time and let them know about our offers and concessions,” said

Haque.