Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, announced that the government would provide free online coaching to students preparing for competitive examinations. The programme, according to the Prime Minister, would use India's digital public infrastructure and teaching talent, reduce the financial burden on families and allow students to prepare while staying at home.
The concerns that the announcement seeks to address are real. The cost of coaching has increased, students routinely move to coaching hubs, and many parents believe that not enrolling their child in a coaching institute puts them at a disadvantage. However, while free online coaching sounds promising, its ability to deliver what conventional coaching does remains questionable.
The Coaching Industry
The private coaching industry in India has grown rapidly over the last two decades. It is a parallel education system, specialising in entrance examinations for medicine, engineering, management, government services and several other careers. A study on the growth of the coaching business in India pointed out that it has grown enough to cast a shadow on the formal education system.
India's private coaching and test-preparation industry is estimated at roughly Rs 58,000 to Rs 1,00,000 crore, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% to 14%, with online and hybrid coaching segments surging even faster at over 15%.
The latest Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education in 2025 found that nearly a third of all Indian students had taken private coaching during the academic year. The proportion was 30.7% in urban areas and 25.5% in rural India. At the higher-secondary level, urban households spent an average of Rs 9,950 per student annually on private coaching, compared with Rs 4,548 in rural areas. However, free online coaching by the government is not exactly a new idea. The PM eVIDYA platform already provides IITPAL lectures prepared by IIT professors for JEE and NEET. The National Testing Agency's E-Abhyas offers test practice. SATHEE, developed by the Ministry of Education and IIT Kanpur, provides free preparation for JEE, NEET, CUET, and other examinations, and reportedly has over 15 lakh registered learners.
There are also separate free or subsidised coaching schemes for Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, De-notified Tribes and other disadvantaged groups. Thus, the government does not lack platforms or content. What is not very clear is how many students use these programmes regularly, complete them, and eventually succeed in the examinations.
Is Online Coaching Enough?
Coaching is not merely about lectures. A well-designed coaching programme involves a tight schedule, regular tests, doubt-clearing sessions, analysis of student performance, remedial inputs, and continuous follow-up. The better programmes also help students develop examination strategies and ensure that those falling behind are identified early.
Research on effective tutoring has shown that high-impact programmes usually involve frequent sessions, small groups, consistent tutors, monitoring of progress, and teaching tailored to individual needs. A Stanford review found that the most effective tutoring programmes had not more than three students per tutor and were conducted at least three times a week for a minimum of ten weeks. Online tutoring can also work when it is individual rather than group, and the success rests on intensity and personalisation of coaching, rather than the mere availability of online content.
Providing recorded lectures, question banks, and automated tests to lakhs of students is possible at a reasonable cost. But providing individual feedback, mentoring, doubt resolution, and follow-up at that scale is a different matter. If these components are absent, the programme will remain a free learning platform, not a coaching programme. If they are included, the initiative will require a large number of competent teachers and mentors and will no longer be inexpensive.
The other problem with online coaching is access. A student may have a mobile phone but not a dedicated device, reliable internet connectivity, or a quiet place to study. These factors affect precisely those students whom a free coaching programme is expected to help. There is also no guarantee that registration will translate into sustained participation.
Few Successful Models
The Dakshana Foundation is an important example of free coaching that appears to be working well. It selects gifted students from impoverished families, largely through their academic records and proprietary testing, and provides them intensive, fully funded residential coaching for one or two years.
In 2026, Dakshana reported that 63% of its engineering aspirants were eligible to secure admission to IITs. Of its 444 medical aspirants, 383 qualified for admission to government medical colleges, while 76% secured MBBS seats. These are impressive results.
However, the success of Dakshana is based on careful student selection, residential training, close supervision and sustained academic support. It currently works with a little over a thousand students across three campuses. Replicating such a model for lakhs, or possibly millions, of students through a national online platform is altogether different. Dakshana's success does not simply establish that free coaching works. It establishes that well-selected students receiving intensive and closely monitored coaching can do exceptionally well.
Past experience with government schemes also calls for caution. A recent parliamentary review found that the Free Coaching Scheme for SC and OBC students covered only 223 students against a target of 3,500 in 2023-24. The number increased to 2,136 the following year, but fell again to 431 in 2025-26. The problem, therefore, is often not the absence of a good objective, but the inability to implement and sustain it.
Should The Government Provide Coaching?
There are many things wrong with India's coaching industry. Fees are high, misleading advertisements are common, student safety has been neglected, and the academic pressure created by some institutes is unhealthy. However, these problems do not necessarily mean that the government should itself enter the coaching business.
The government's role should be to create a strong regulatory framework for coaching institutes. Registration, disclosure of faculty credentials, transparent fee and refund policies, student safety, reasonable teaching hours, grievance redressal, and mental health support must be made mandatory. Claims about examination results should also be independently verifiable.
Regulation should not, however, become excessive control over fees and academic operations. Arbitrary price caps or bureaucratic interference may reduce quality, encourage hidden charges, and push smaller providers into the informal sector. The aim must be to make coaching safer and more transparent without making its legitimate operation difficult.
There is also a possible conflict of interest. The government, through different agencies, conducts or oversees many of the examinations for which it now proposes to provide coaching. The same broad system becoming both the examiner and the coaching provider may raise questions about fairness, even when there is no actual sharing of privileged information. A clear institutional separation between examination bodies and any publicly supported coaching initiative will therefore be necessary.
The government can support disadvantaged students through scholarships, vouchers, or direct financial assistance for coaching from accredited providers. It can also provide free, high-quality study material, test series, and digital libraries. This would improve access without turning the state into another coaching provider.
The Real Problem
The growth of coaching is not the actual problem. It is a symptom of the gap between what schools teach and what high-stakes competitive examinations demand. It is also driven by the scarcity of affordable and high-quality higher education seats.
The National Education Policy 2020 had proposed reforming assessments to eliminate the need for coaching classes. Creating a large government coaching system seems to accept that the coaching race is inevitable, rather than attempting to reduce the need for it.
Correcting school education, improving teaching quality, reforming entrance examinations, and expanding access to good higher education are difficult things to do. They require sustained funding, institutional reforms, and time. Free coaching, on the other hand, is easier to announce.
It is always easier to provide a band-aid than to address the cause and the wound itself. Unless the gaps in school and higher education are addressed, free coaching may increase access to content without improving the chances of those who need support the most. It sounds good from the ramparts of the Red Fort, but there remains a high chance that it will not work.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
