BENGALURU: Students pursuing science courses at government pre-university colleges in the state will get free coaching for various competitive examinations to get admissions to undergraduate professional courses from the current academic year. Classes will be held for 15 hours per week between 7.30 am and 9 am on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Attendance for students will be mandatory for the classes which will begin from August. Preparatory exams will be conducted twice a year.
The scheme was announced in the recent budget presented by the Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and the state department of pre -university education has already submitted a proposal to the higher education department to start the same at 250 government PU colleges.As per the information available from the PUE department, this initiative will be launched in association with assistance from the state department of technical education and Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) under ICT initiative (Information and Communication Technology).
Though it is mentioned in the budget speech by CM that this coaching will be for the benefit of SC/ST and other backward community students, the officials from PUE department said that this will be for all students studying at government colleges. Coaching will be for four days a week for Common Entrance Test (CET), National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and students studying in second PUC this year will get benefit of this.
“When we look at the ratio of students qualifying for competitive exams like NEET, JEE and CET, it is very less for students from government colleges. And lack of coaching to face competitive exams is one of the main reasons for this,” said a senior official of the PUE department.