Self-learning system in IB edu buckles under tuition industry

Every Tuesday and Friday, after leaving the south Mumbai international school which costs her parents upwards of Rs 10 lakh annually, Ananya C attends another ‘school’.

- Namita Devidayal

Here, a tutor from Santy Sir’s formidable stable of teachers helps her navigate math and physics problems — for another Rs 10 lakh per year.

While elite International Baccalaureate (IB) World schools — there are about 40 in Mumbai and 200 across India — profess to offer a more progressive curriculum motivating students to engage with self-learning, the system appears to have collapsed into Indian ‘jugaad’ with a full-blown parallel tuition industry. There are now tutors for every subject, especially mathematics, science and economics. Most of them are young, do not have a background in education, and have mastered the hacks of tutoring kids.

Wherever there are IB schools, there are thriving tuition schools. “We have 60 tutors working for us, and 90 associate tutors,” says Santosh Birajdar, who is widely known as Santy Sir, and has cultivated a pyramid of teachers for every subject, and every level, including a low-end “take up sir” whose only job it is to do revision with the student. “IB school fees range from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 20 lakh per year in Mumbai, but with tuitions it becomes double the amount,” says Birajdar, who has engineering and business degrees and started tutoring his juniors in college. “Most of my tutors are young and can relate with the children,” he adds. The tutors’ backgrounds range from one who is a stock broker by day to one who used to work in telecom and says he got tired of his abusive boss.