12/29/2017 In Kota, teachers are rockstars - Livemint

KOTA COACHING CLASSES ENGINEERING IIT-JEE SINGLE ENTRANCE TEST

In Kota, teachers are rockstars

For an outsider they may be teachers; for the test-prep centres of Kota, they are also a business tool to
attract students
Prashant K. Nanda prashant.n@livemint.com
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First Published: Sun, Sep 09 2012. 11 56 PM IST Share

The average annual salary of a teacher is in the range of Rs.18-Rs.30 lakh.

Updated: Mon, Sep 10 2012. 12 56 AM IST

Kota, Rajasthan: When a user logs into the official website of Etoos Academy, a
newcomer to Kota’s coaching school scene, a young teacher’s image pops up. “The
unbelievable just happened: MC sir predicted two exact questions for the IIT JEE
2012 Mathematics paper,” boasts the website.

MC is short for Manoj Chauhan, who’s on the faculty of Etoos Academy, a Korean
educational company that’s opened a coaching school in Kota to tutor students
appearing for the joint entrance examination (JEE) for admission to the Indian
Institutes of Technology (IITs).

A pop-up is, of course, a normal feature on the Internet, but in this case it tells a
story about Kota, the coaching-school capital of India. When a visitor enters the
town, he or she is greeted with billboards, banners and neon-lit signs featuring
teachers, flaunting their credentials and boasting of their power to deliver result.

In this Rajasthan town, the teachers hog all the limelight. They are the rock stars.

Sample this: Gautam sir looks down from a large hoarding on Road No.1 and HP
(Hanuman Prasad) sir from a vertical banner on City Mall, the new shopping and
hangout zone of Kota.

“Top-notch ex-faculty of Bansal Classes” is the description for HP sir who, along
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with his wife “Suman madam”, is featured on several banners and promises to turn
students into chemistry enthusiasts.

For an outsider they may be teachers; for the test-prep centres of Kota, they are
also a business tool to attract students.

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Take the salary structure of a coaching-school teacher in a Kota: while the average
annual salary is in the range of Rs.18-Rs.30 lakh, the stars earn more than Rs.50
lakh.

“Teachers are the key for any coaching centre and they getting star status is logical.
Unlike the normal academics, we hail teachers and compensate them duly,” said
Pramod Maheshwari, chief executive of Career Point coaching school.

Some Career Point teachers get more than Rs.60 lakh a year—at least six times the
salary earned by the director of an Indian Institute of Technology or Indian
Institute of Management.

“You are asking Shah Rukh Khan whether he is a superstar,” said Chauhan, a 2007
graduate of IIT-Delhi, when asked about the status of a Kota coaching-school
teacher.

Once a star on the faculty of Bansal Classes, he quit to join Etoos and now draws in
excess of Rs.80 lakh a year.

Of course, the teachers have to earn their salaries and build their reputations by
delivering results to students who aspire for seats in elite engineering schools. The
work is hard.

“Imagine teaching for eight to nine hours a day to hundreds of students besides
administrative responsibilities,” said C.S. Sharma, who teaches physics at
Resonance coaching school.

“Students come with a dream and we have to fulfil that. This industry, unlike
normal academics whether in school or college, is result-driven,” said Jeewan Jyoti
Agarwal of Allen Career Institute. “You have to engage students, explain the basics,
clear their doubts. You make them stand out among peers. It’s a responsibility and
a direct connect too.”

And, says Krishna Mohan, another member of the Etoos faculty, a teacher has to be
able to hold the attention of students. “You have to tell them a story to explain a
problem, cut jokes to break the monotony and listen to their question carefully,”
Mohan said. In Kota, a teacher may even have to dance with students at a party to
be a part of the group.

Perhaps, these are the qualities that attract students towards a teacher and make
him a star here. Mohan, who originally hails from Andhra Pradesh said that before
coming to Kota few years back he was a professor in a private university in Orissa
and before that as a faculty in a coaching institute in Hyderabad. “You never get
recognition like Kota anywhere else. When I go to a restaurant, even people
recognize and respect me. This encourages you to perform better,” he added.

Both professors and managing director of the leading test-prep companies believe
that Indian education system cannot improve without giving teachers their due.
And if teachers are getting it in Kota, where coaching centres are corporate in their
look, behaviour and approach—breaking the conventional wisdom of a tuition
centre in the country—it’s because they are largely owned by the teachers.

Bansals Classes founder, V.K. Bansal is a teacher and still teaches today, Career Point
CEO Maheswari is a teacher. Verma, the founder and managing director of
Resonance is a IIT-Madras graduate and takes at least two to three classes every
day. Allen Career Institute is run by four brothers, three of who are teachers, and
Vibrant academy was set up by a breakaway group of teachers from Bansals.
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However, all is not rosy on teachers front as institutes feel that poaching of
teachers is a key concern for them. In 2011, Etoos, a South Korean coaching giant
entered the Kota market after poaching 21 faculties, including eight star faculties
from Bansal Classes alone. Some four years back, seven leading faculties of Bansals
left the organization to start a new institute called Vibrant Academy. Now, it’s said
to have dented the business of Bansals. Last year, over a dozen star faculties joined

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Allen and this year, a number of faculties left Vibrant to join Motion IIT another
player in Kota.

“It’s all for money,” said P.K. Bansal, chief executive of Bansal Classes, sitting in his
neatly decorated office in Road No. 1 of this Rajasthan town. “We were the
pioneers of coaching here and people poach faculty from us. But we have our own
system to train and create fresh stars. We are the nursery of teachers.”

How does it happen? The churning starts in the third week of February after the
last review exam of students in 11th standard of school. These are the kids who
come to Kota for two years and develop bond with quality faculties and when a
teacher moves out of one institute, the students follow. “A teacher can take away
hundreds of students with him. It’s like a corporate leader—he leaves the
organization along with his team,” said a faculty requesting anonymity.

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First Published: Sun, Sep 09 2012. 11 56 PM IST Share

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