Why Do School Integrated Programs (SIP) With Major Coaching Brands Fail?

It may sound unbelievable now, but just a few decades ago, “extra” classes or home tuition used to be conducted by school teachers for students who were significantly lagging and required “extra attention” to keep up. The rest studied on their own or in a group. There existed a healthy camaraderie and competitive spirit that collectively lifted everyone.

Competitive spirit to competitive sprint

Today, competitive examinations have a variety of forms and norms. To get admission into a prestigious institute and pursue a course of choice, you will encounter stiff competition in entrance tests for a minuscule number of available seats! A rat race is on, and “private coaching” in 2020 lured over 70 million students and became a US$ 3.5 billion industry.

The fear of missing out has converted it into a competitive sprint to the finish with few winners. Our students are now consumers in the education marketplace. Coaching classes compete to win by hook or crook. Sad but true!

An enticing trap

National coaching brands offer a tempting shortcut under the guise of “Schools Integrated Programs”, forming partnerships with schools to provide after-school or during-school coaching. Gullible schools are happy with “everything to gain, nothing to lose”, as parents prefer enrolling children in such schools. A trap well laid.

Expensive lessons

The promising start of such SIPs with coaching institutes soon begins to falter as the schools are unaware of how to run integrated models and instead run into troublesome issues:

• Violation of rules

Schools have affiliations with education boards such as the respective state boards, or the CBSE, ICSE, IB, IGCSE, and others. These affiliations have strict compliance rules and regulations prohibiting schools from forming third-party associations to conduct coaching classes.

• Foolhardy risk

Schools that run such integrated programs within the school campus or elsewhere risk losing their board affiliations. Worse still, their hard-earned reputation can get destroyed, asides from the potential financial loss. Despite this, some schools are willing to take a risk due to the overwhelming temptations that can eventually become foolhardy lessons for schools, parents and innocent students.

• Financial penalty

Private coaching institutes are in business first, education later. They expect a certain minimum of student enrolment guarantees. Failure to enrol “enough” students becomes an income gap that schools fill by paying the coaching partner an equivalent penalty fee: an unhealthy lose–win association.

• Unhealthy teacher comparison

External coaching class teachers get compared with internal school teachers. Rather than becoming synergetic dual sources of gaining knowledge by students, in an unhealthy comparison, the better-perceived teachers start getting favourable attention while their counterparts get ignored. 

This ‘conflict of interest’ can potentially escalate into a conflict between the respective management teams.

Hop-Step-Jump

Students take time to adapt to teachers and their teaching styles. Hence, teachers’ continuity matters. Coaching class teachers are prone to competitive market dynamics. Their continuity suffers since they tend to hop-step-jump to newer market opportunities. Their high attrition rate is in complete contrast to school teachers who have dedicated long-term relationships with their school and students.

Asynchronous learning chaos

Imagine peddling two different bicycles at the same time! Students learn two chapters/concepts from both teachers simultaneously. Quite a jumble, perhaps requiring double/quadruple of time revising to comprehend. It adds to the stress, time, and effort of students. Rather than improved grades and simplified learning, this can have a chaotic counter-effect.

Asynchronous learning calendars

School and coaching institutes’ academic calendars differ significantly. For students, it is like being caught between the fast and furious coaching class faculty v/s the slow and steady school teacher! Likely to be a dissatisfactory, confusing experience for students.

The insider-outsider syndrome

A school is unlike the corporate entity that a coaching institute is. Both are governed by vastly different sets of rules externally and internally – be it about policies, rules and regulations, conduct, values and other conflicting situations.

Indeed, the school integrated programs (SIP) with major coaching brands fail just as trying to fit a round peg in a square hole will!

Recipe for success

At H&K Edvisers, we find a perfectly rounded and end-to-end squared solution for success. Key components of our end-to-end solution are:

• We design an integrated curriculum that includes a regular CBSE curriculum and the essentials for Integrated IIT-JEE coaching, Integrated NEET coaching and other foundation programs.
• We assist recruit faculty and train them to be up-skilled to teach the integrated curriculum.
• We aligned common goals with schools to ensure a smooth transition from a regular curriculum school to an integrated model.

Several schools testify to our experience and expertise in creating, delivering and successfully implementing an integrated curriculum for them. If you are a parent, teacher, principal or school administrator, please reach out as we are here to learn more about your requirements.

At H&K Edvisers, we are committed to assisting schools in developing integrated curriculums for boards and competitive examinations such as IIT-JEE, NEET, NATA, NIFT, and NID for grades 11 and 12, NTSE, Olympiads, and KVPY for grades 6 to 10.