TENKASI: Students and parents have expressed dissatisfaction over the lack of proper NEET coaching at the Tenkasi district residential government Model School, claiming that teachers were asking students to prepare for the medical entrance examination using ChatGPT and YouTube videos instead of providing specialised training. However, senior officials refuted the claims.
The Tenkasi school is one of 38 district-level Model Schools established across Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs 352.42 crore with the objective of providing quality education and specialised coaching for NEET, JEE and other entrance examinations for admission to premier institutions.
In Tenkasi, the School Education Department had shifted academically outstanding students from government schools across the district to the Model School, where around 450 students in the Classes IX to XII are currently studying. Around 40 Class XII biology students were selected for NEET coaching this year.
“However, the teachers are not teaching our students for NEET. The students are forced to prepare themselves for the medical entrance examination using ChatGPT and YouTube,” alleged the parents.
Some students whom TNIE interacted with said teachers handling Botany, Chemistry and Physics were not even teaching them to complete the worksheets sent from Chennai by the department.
The students further alleged that whenever regional-level inspectors visited the school every fortnight and State-level inspectors arrived every month to review the quality of education, they were made to solve problems from the worksheets in their notebooks with the help of ChatGPT and show them to the inspectors.
The students said the worksheets were important as they were based on the NCERT syllabus. “We are neither taught how to solve these worksheets nor coached for NEET preparation,” they alleged. The parents said they could have arranged specialised NEET coaching outside if their children had been allowed to continue in their previous government schools.
“We were happy when our children were shifted to the Model School as the department had claimed that they would be provided high-quality NEET training. Now, some teachers say specialised NEET training is provided only at the Tiruchy Model School,” they said.
“Most of us are farmers and beedi-rollers who want to see our children become doctors. But the Tenkasi Model School is ruining our children’s prospects. Now, we cannot even pull our children out of the Model School midway,” the parents demanded.
Model School’s headmaster Subramaniya Durai said that he had not received any complaints from the parents regarding the issue. “We are continuously improving the quality of coaching and have so far sent around 50 students to different premier institutions. Two of our students who were sent to a specialised NEET centre for coaching secured a medical seat. We coach the students for NEET even after the board exams are over,” he said.
Senior officials said that a list of ‘Manarkeni’ and YouTube videos relevant to each subject is shared by the State and students work through these, along with peer learning and other resources such as ChatGPT, in the hi-tech labs during self-study hours.
“By design, teachers solve only a few (higher-order) questions of the worksheets and assign the rest for supervised self-study. Specialised day-long support is provided at the district Model Schools in Trichy, Chennai, Salem, Krishnagiri, Madurai and Thoothukudi, based on the availability of expert teachers.
These schools are designed to serve as training-cum-resource hubs for neighbouring district Model Schools. To strengthen teachers’ training in competitive-examination-focused teaching, a three-hour online training session is held every week, and all teachers take external assessments every month. The aim is for all district Model Schools to reach this level within a year,” the officials said.
