Bootcamps equip students for top exams

Offering quality mentoring and coaching for competitive examinations, government schools in the state are levelling the playing field for students to compete with the otherwise highly commercialised industry. While coaching for exams like JEE and NEET at private centres can cost anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh, government schools in the city have launched free-of-cost coaching classes for these competitive exams.

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The government schools in the district, including Schools of Eminence, recently conducted the first session of a winter bootcamp for Class XII students, aimed at preparing them for STEM courses in competitive exams. The initiative aligns with the Punjab Government’s broader efforts to uplift the standard of education and create a brighter future for students. The coaching is particularly aimed at economically disadvantaged students from Scheduled Castes (SCs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and beneficiaries of the PM CARES for Children Scheme.

Additionally, the government schools have partnered with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which launched the Self-Assessment Test and Help for Entrance Exams (SATHEE) scheme. This initiative is designed to assist students in preparing for competitive exams like JEE (engineering), NEET (medical) and SSC (government services) at no cost. The programme, designed to support students from diverse backgrounds, particularly those in remote and rural areas, provides high-quality learning resources, expert mentorship and self-assessment tools. In Amritsar, 300 students have registered for SATHEE, with 118 students currently undergoing training at coaching bootcamps across Schools of Eminence and other schools.

“These bootcamp classes have students from Class XII being mentored by highly qualified teachers from the Schools of Eminence, who train them for exams like NEET and JEE. Additionally, the SATHEE application uses an online method of mentoring, featuring video lectures from experts at institutions such as IIT and AIIMS. Students can register for free, select their area of focus — whether engineering, medical or SSC exams — and access tutorials and self-assessment tools,” said Harbhagwant Singh, the District Education Officer (Secondary). According to him, government schools across the district are now running crash courses to help students prepare for various competitive exams.

Last year, 50 students from government schools took the JEE Mains, and this year, three of them achieved more than a 90 percentile. Yukti Gupta, a Class XII student at the School of Eminence, Mall Road, is one of the students receiving coaching under this programme as she prepares for engineering entrance exams. Yukti was part of a team from the School of Eminence Mall Road that designed a strawberry board for ISRO’s Azaadi SAT programme, and she also visited the ISRO launch centre at Sriharikota. Aspiring to pursue Aeronautical Engineering or aerospace research, Yukti is preparing for the Vellore Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute for Aeronautical Engineering and Information Technology, Pune.

“It’s a huge help that we get coaching at school itself, which saves us time and money. Coaching fees at private centres are quite high. I aspire to work hard and get into my preferred college,” Yukti said. Her elder sister, also a former student of the School of Eminence Mall Road, is currently studying medicine at Government Medical College, Amritsar.

Yukti’s father is an educator, and her mother works in a government job. She said that getting free coaching at school is a great support for students from middle to lower-income families, who no longer have to strain their parents’ savings.

Another student, Sahebpreet Singh, from Government Senior Secondary School, Sathiala, also aspires to attend a top engineering college to pursue a course in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science.

The education department has also enlisted mentors from prestigious institutions like IIT Kharagpur, IISER Mohali, and IIT Ropar to coach students in government schools through these bootcamps.

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