TIMES CITY THE TIMES OF INDIA, CHENNAI | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2012
COUNTRY HAS RESOURCES FOR SAFE COMPUTING PLATFORM, SAYS FREE SOFTWARE EXPONENT | 4
CRPF TOP COP TALKS TOUGH ON CLEARING ‘RED CORRIDOR’, 70K TROOPS TO BE TRAINED | 8
For Some, Teaching Is A $10 Session Over The Internet, For Others It Is An Income Source Generating Lakhs A Year
China, Vietnam students learn from
NEED OF THE HOUR
Demand for coaching grows from students of int’l schools
E-TUTORS IN CITY W Imaging: Kannan sundar
Low Fees A Big Advantage For English, Math Teachers From India Sharanya Gautam | TNN
A
fter she gets back from college every evening, Maria Rodrigues, 23, stays up late training an Italian student in Milan for a qualifying English exam. Rodrigues is a doctorate student at the University of Madras and has been taking e-tuitions in English and biology for foreign students since the last one year. “These students can speak a bit of English, but need help with grammar or vocabulary. Some sign up to learn specific topics like genetics,” says Rodrigues. Teachers like her are signing up with online tuition portals to teach students abroad over the internet.
AID FROM AN APP
M
obile applications to help students prepare for examinations are gaining popularity. Edserve, an educational services company, has launched a free mobile application called Edsmart to help students clear doubts. Students type in their queries, which are answered by an online tutor, and the response is sent to them as an email.
There is a huge demand for spoken English classes from countries like China and Vietnam, says Sujai G Pillai, founder of online coaching portal www.2tion.com. It’s not just foreign students; NRIs too hire tutors from India. “Older Indians who have moved to countries like Australia and New Zealand and are not fluent in English also enroll in classes,” he says. Maths is another subject for which tuitions are in demand, especially in Europe, the US, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. “Indians are considered academically ad-
vanced and even ‘nerdy’ aboard,” says Ganesh Krishnan, founder and CEO at TutorVista, a Bangalore-based online coaching company which was started six years ago. Online coaching makes tutors available at a convenient time. The use of smart phones and tablets has also made online coaching easier, says Krishnan. Indian teachers provide cheaper options to foreign students who have to pay as much as $40 a session in countries like the US. “We charge around $10-$15 a session,” says Rodrigues. “The rates are low for them, but it is still a lot of money for us,” she says. “I have heard of teachers who do this full-time and earn as much as a lakh a month,” says Geetha V K, who started taking online tuition classes a few years ago after having taught in an international school for seven years. Indian teachers are also preferred because of the Indian schooling system, which is known to be theory intensive compared to the US, where the syllabus is largely application-based. Geetha says many of her foreign students join e-classes as they need help finishing their homework and assignments. Since most e-classes do not involve eye-to-eye contact between the teacher and the student, tutors say teaching over the internet is challenging. “Understanding accents is a problem initially,” says Geetha. Teachers use audio, and many use powerpoint presentations or white boards to teach. Portals like Tutorvista also provide training to teachers for the foreign syllabi and provide materials to keep them updated.
EXERCISE BOOK
Kamini Mathai | TNN
BIG BUCKS
ith more international schools cropping up in the city, tuition and coaching centres have begun branching out to cater to the needs of these students. And, tutors say, it’s a whole new ball game. “The kind of exams and the grading system in international boards — American, British (which comprises Cambridge and Edexcel) and International Baccalaureate — is completely different from the state, matriculation and central boards,” says educational consultant K R Malaati. The questions are from outside the book, challenging a student on concepts. The answers have to be concise, not more than two lines, and the end result, not the process, has to be presented. In the Indian boards, the process or the steps of getting to an answer are given importance while grading, and students have to answer in detail. The first international school came up in Chennai in 2004; today there are nine. Malaati, who used to run an international board coaching centre, says there were only a couple of tutors earlier. Now, more than a dozen have cropped up. “There has been a spurt in tutoring centres because schools are still coming to grips with the n ew c u r r i c u lum,” she says. Patricia Parameswaran, who has a teenaged daughter, agrees with her. As her daughter was scoring Bs, she enrolled the girl in private tuition. “My daughter needs good scores to get into
Extra help doesn’t come cheap. Tuition fees cost a bomb today
State board Class-type tuition
`8,000
Personal coaching
`70,000
CBSE/ICSE Class-type tuition
`15,000
Personal coaching
`80,000
International boards Personal coaching | `70,000 to Rs 2 lakh (there is no mass tuition, only one-on-one coaching) (*All costs for classes 11 & 12) the neuroscience course she wants to do in the UK,” she says. “Many of her classmates were also doing badly. The schools call themselves international, but the standard of teaching is not good. I am paying as much for private tuitions as I do as fees to the school,” says Parameswaran, who sends her daughter for 12 hours of tuition a week for three subjects. Fees at international schools run to a couple of lakhs a year compared to a central or state board school where fees is around `40,000. Fees for international curriculum at tuition centres are also higher. Patricia’s tuition package costs around `7,200 a week. Another Chennai mom, Sridevi S, spends `2,500 per subject per month for her son’s ICSE syllabus tuition. Her sister, meanwhile, pays just `500 a month per subject for her son’s matriculation syllabus coaching. “The extra cost for international curriculum coaching is justified as preparation for the international curriculum boards is similar to an IIT exam. Results are not possible with rote-learning. Tutors need sound technical background on the subject and must understand the questioning and evaluation pattern. We conduct extensive technical interviews before hiring tutors,” says Vidhya Sriram, who founded Topperz@work in 2009. Raji Srikanth, who runs Phoenix Coaching Centre, which tutors for Indian and international boards, says tutoring a candidate for an international board exam requires more effort. kamini.mathai@timesgroup.com
sharanya.gautam@timesgroup.com
THE TIMES OF INDIA
Online GPS truck-tracking system crashes Pratiksha Ramkumar
WE CONGRATULATE THE COMPETITION FOR FINALLYY
WAKING UPTO THE TIMES OF INDIA.
Four years ago, Chennal woke up to the Times of of India. Finally, our competition has, too. We ’ve enjoyed their new campaign reacting to our success in Chennal. We now look fo rwa rd to them emulating our approach to connecting with readers , led bya new editor and CEO who ’ve cut their teeth at the Times of India. We wish them good morning and good luck. _
TNN
Chennai: The website of Chennai Corporation has an option, Vehicle Monitoring, which is supposed to let anyone keep a track of garbage trucks and waste collected from all the zones of the civic body. The facility had been devised so that all garbage trucks, fitted with GPS tracking systems, could be monitored online. The corporation’s solid waste management and the vehicle maintenance departments were supposed to monitor the system. But two years after the system was introduced as a pilot project, it has proved to be of little use like many of the civic body’s other technology-driven initiatives. “It does not tell us anything worthwhile, except that a certain amount of garbage is being cleared from our zone. We do not know where the garbage is being collected from,” said Raji Suresh, the secretary of an apartment residents’ association in Mandaveli. In many parts of the city including Royapettah, Kodambakkam, Chetpet, Tiruvanmiyur and Mylapore, where many of the city’s educational institutions are located, people say there is no way to make sure that waste is collected on time or hold corporation officials accountable for disposal of garbage. There are two large garbage bins on Sundareshwarar Road, on which three schools are located. They always appear to be overflowing with waste, say
TECHNOLOGY FAILS
residents. “The bins are often overturned and waste collects on the road. The garbage truck comes in the morning when students are coming to school and it causes chaos by blocking the entire road. The corporation men can move faster and collect more garbage if the vehicle comes a little later. We need an effective monitoring system for garbage disposal,” said R Aruna, principal of Sivasami Kalalaya School. Experts said several cities in the country use the GPS tracking system and it has been a success in Hyderabad. “The system can be used to good effect by residents and the corporation. It can provide details like how much waste various roads or areas produce, and garbage vans can be routed accordingly,” said B Nirmal of Exnora. But officials of the vehicle maintenance department, who are in charge of truck coordination, said the system never really took off. “We started it as a pilot project on trial and error basis, but it was never officially adopted,” said a corporation official. pratiksha.ramkumar@timesgroup.com
4th Dr Mohan award presented
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TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: Dr G Balakrishnan Nair, executive director of Translation Health Science and Technology Institute, was presented with the fourth Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Research Foundation gold medal oration award at a ceremony in New Delhi on Sunday. The award was presented by
the president of the Madras Science Foundation and former director of CLRI Dr G Thyagarajan. Dr Balakrishnan’s research has led to important publications, vast teaching experience and extensive research in microbiology, pathogenesis of diseases, molecular epidemiology and 5 patents, said Thyagarajan during the function.