NEW DELHI: A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed before the Supreme Court by a lawyer challenging India’s growing, unregulated, fee-driven coaching ecosystem.
The petition has stated that this ecosystem reduced formal schooling as a means to just get a certificate.
"It has only given access to professional education as a 'privilege' purchased by money," the petition said.
The plea filed in the top court by lawyer Narendra Kumar Goswami, under Article 32 of the Constitution, sought urgent constitutional intervention against the alleged nexus between private coaching centres, dummy schools, entrance-examination bodies and regulatory inaction.
The PIL invokes Articles 14, 21 and 21A of the Constitution, along with Articles 38, 39(f), 45 and 46, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
The petition sought directions to the Centre and other authorities to dismantle the 'parallel, unregulated, fee-driven private coaching ecosystem', align school curricula with national entrance examinations such as JEE, NEET, CLAT, CUET and SSC, eradicate the “dummy school” nexus, and establish a binding national framework for student mental health and equal educational opportunity.
The respondents include the Union of India(UOI), Ministry of Education, National Testing Agency, CBSE, NCERT, National Medical Commission, IIT Council, Bar Council of India, Staff Selection Commission, CCPA, NCPCR and all States/UTs.
The petition framed the issue not as a private grievance, but as a national constitutional emergency affecting millions of children and youth, particularly those from poor, rural, SC/ST/OBC/EWS and first-generation learner families.
The plea said the central charge of the petition is simple but grave. "The Indian State prescribes one school system, but professional destiny is increasingly decided by another system — the private coaching market."
In effect, the petition said, the classroom has been displaced by the coaching cubicle, the teacher by the test-series vendor, and the constitutional promise of education by the commercial tyranny of rank.
"The present system creates a brutal two-tier structure. One section goes to expensive coaching centres, buys curated material, mock tests, analytics, faculty access and examination strategy. The other section sits in ordinary schools, follows the prescribed syllabus, and is then told to compete in examinations for which the schooling system itself has not adequately prepared. This, the petition argues, is not equality. It is a State-manufactured inequality," it added.
The petition reserves its strongest attack for the phenomenon of “dummy schools.”
It alleges that children are formally enrolled in CBSE or State Board schools but, in reality, do not attend regular schooling and are instead kept in coaching centres for extremely long hours.
The petitioner describes this as a fraud on schooling, a fraud on the child, and a fraud on Article 21A.
The petition’s pre-litigation representation specifically alleges that the dummy-school nexus confines children to coaching centres for 14–16 hours a day and directly assaults their physical and mental health.
The PIL further stated that the problem is not merely academic, but constitutional, psychological and moral. It linked the coaching culture with the student mental-health crisis and said that adolescent children are being placed under crushing pressure in the name of competition.
The petition argues that the right to life under Article 21 is not merely a right to breathe, but a right to live with dignity, mental integrity and freedom from preventable institutional harm.